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Class Struggles in the USSR:Second Period1923-1930by Charles BettelheimTranslated by Brian Pearce

This second volume of CharlesBettelheim's sweeping new interpretationof Soviet history makes abundantly clearthat the Bolshevik Party's policy towardthe disintegrating worker-peasant alliancein the 1920s shaped the future of Sovietsociety. By 1921 the peasants, who saw in therevolution of 1917 an escape from war,famine, and landlord oppression, wereexhausted and disaffected by the years ofcivil war. The great question at that pointwas how to rebuild the economy, whichmeant first of all that the alliance betweencity and countryside had to be reforged.The New Economic Policy was theBolshevik response to this crisis. In hisreview of this book (Monthly Review,October 1977), Paul Sweezy points outthat there were two possible courses: onewas to view the problem as short term, toplacate the peasantry by incentives andconcessions, and through the growth ofagricultural production restore theeconomy to at least its pre-revolutionarylevels. In this view, the problems areprimarily economic and the revolutionarytransformation of the peasantry is seen asa distant objective. The second way, Sweezy points out,was to see the two basic problems facingthe Bolsheviks as inextricably intertwined,and therefore to require policies thatwould both provide the peasants withmaterial assistance and incentives inorder to convince them that thecooperative route was in their own bestinterests, and at the same time to remoldtheir outlook from that of isolated petty

(continued on back flap)

Class struggles in the USSR

Class strugglesin the USSRby Charles Bettelheim

Translated by Brian Pearce

Second period: 1923–1930

Monthly Review PressNew York and London

From Marx to Mao

ML

Digital Reprints2016

www.marx2mao.com

NOTE: The translation of this book into English hasgiven the author the opportunity to check a number ofhis references and, as a result, to revise parts of the text.

Copyright © 1978 by Monthly Review PressAll rights reserved

Originally published as Les luttes de classes en URSS,copyright © 1977 by Maspero/Seuil, Paris France.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataBettelheim, Charles

Class struggles in the U.S.S.R.Translation of Les luttes de classes en URSS.CONTENTS: [1] First period, 1917–1923.

[2] Second period, 1923–1930.Bibliography: v. 1, p. 531–537; v. 2, p.:595.Includes indexes.1. Russia—Politics and government—1917–

2. Russia—Social conditions—1917–3. Kommunisticheskaia Partiia Sovietskogo Soiuza.4. Russia—History—Revolution, 1917–1921. I. TitleDK266.B4413 302.9′47′084 76-28986ISBN 0–85343–396-9 (v. 1) ISBN 0–85343–437-X(v. 2)

Monthly Review Press62 West 14th Street, New York, N.Y. 1001121 Theobalds Road, London WCIX 8SL

First Printing

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ContentsPreface 11

Introduction to the “second period” 21

Part 1. The development of commodityand money relations and ofplanning in the NEP period 49

1. The reconstitution of a monetary andfinancial system 53

2. The development of the machinery andprocedures of economic planning 73

Part 2. The village during the NEPperiod. Differentiation and classstruggles. Agricultural policy andtransformation of social relationsin agriculture 83

1. The social conditions of immediateproduction during the NEP period 85

2. The economic and social conditionsgoverning the reproduction andtransformation of production relationagriculture during the NEP 135

3. The reproduction and transformation ofideological and political relations in therural areas 163

5

6 Contents

Part 3. The contradictions and classstruggles in the industrial andurban sectors 187

1. The direct manifestations of thewith the masses 189

2. The contradictions between the privatesector and the state sector in industry andtrade 197

3. The forms of ownership in the state sectorand the structure of the immediateproduction process 209

4. The integration of state-owned industry inthe overall process of reproduction of theconditions of production 266

5. The categories of price, wages, and profit,and their class significance 285

6. The forms of organization of the workingclass 330

Part 4. The changes in ideological andpolitical relations within theBolshevik Party 355

1. The fight for the worker-peasant alliance 361

2. The fight for rapid industrialization andfor priority for heavy industry 398

3. The Bolshevik ideological formation andits transformations 500

Part 5. The “great change” and theemergence of new contradictions 589

Bibliography 595

Index 607

Key to abbreviations, initials, and Russianwords used in the text

Artel A particular form of producers’ cooperativeBatrak Agricultural laborerBednyak Poor peasantCC Central Committee of the PartyCCC Central Control Commission of the PartyCCTU Central Council of the Trade UnionsChervonets A coin equivalent to ten gold roubles or 7.7423

grams of refined gold, issued from 1923 onCLD Council for Labor and DefenseCLI Central Labor InstituteCPR(B) Communist Party of Russia (Bolsheviks)CPSU(B) Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bol-

sheviks)EC Executive Committee (of a soviet)Elektrobank Bank for financing electrificationGlavk Chief Administration (usually under the direc-

tion of a People’s Commissariat or of theVSNKh)

Goselro State Commission for the Electrification ofRussia

Gosbank State bankGosplan State Planning CommissionGPU State Political Administration (political police)Khozraschet Financial autonomy (literally “business ac-

counting”)

7

8 Charles Bettelheim

Kolkhoz Collective farm (usually organized as an artel)Kommuna Collective farm with joint ownership of means

of production carried farther than in an artel,and with sharing of the proceeds on the basisof members’ needs

Komsomol Young Communist LeagueKontraktatsiya System of contracts between the peasants and

the state purchasing agenciesKulak Rich peasantMir Village communityNarkomfin People’s Commissariat of FinanceKontraktatsiya People’s Commissariat of LaborNEP New Economic PolicyNOT “Scientific organization of work”OGPU Unified State Political Administration (succes-

sor to GPU)Orgraspred Department for organization and allocation of

Party cadresOsvok Special commission of the VSNKh for the re-

construction of fixed capital (involved in eco-nomic planning)

PB Political BureauPerekachka Literally, “pumping”; used for the transfer-

ence of resources from agriculture to industry;equivalent to the concept of “tribute” exactedfrom agriculture

Podkulachnik “Abettor of kulaks”RSDLP Russian Social Democratic Labor PartyRSDLP(B) Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bol-

sheviks)Proletkult “Proletarian culture”; name of the organiza-

tion devoted to promoting this conceptPrombank Bank for financing industryPromfinplan Industrial and financial plan

Class Struggles in the USSR 9

Rabkrin Workers’ and Peasants’ InspectorateRKK Commission for settling labor disputesRSFSR Russian Socialist Federal Soviet RepublicSerednyak Middle peasantSkhod Village assemblySokha Wooden ploughSovkhoz State farmSovnarkom Council of People’s CommissarsSovznak “Settlement note”; the currency issued under

war communismSplochnaya “Complete” collectivization of a given areaSupryaga Traditional form of mutual aid among peasantsToz Elementary form of collective farm (“associa-

tion for joint cultivation of the soil”)Tsekombank Bank responsible for financing municipal un-

dertakingsTsGAOR Central Archives of the October RevolutionTsIK Central Executive Committee of the Congress

of SovietsUchraspred Section for listing and allocation of Party

cadres (replaced by Orgraspred)Udarnik Shock-workerVLKSM All-Union Leninist Communist League of

Youth, i.e., Young Communist League, orKomsomol

VSNKh Supreme Council of the National EconomyVTsIK All-Union Central Executive Committee (of

the Congress of Soviets)WPI Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate

11

PrefaceMy purpose in the present volume is to continue my analy-

sis of the process of transformation of the Soviet social forma-ztion through the years 1923–1930, defining the way in whichsuccesses and failures were intermingled in that period, andso prepared the subsequent victories and defeats experiencedby the working class and the masses of the people in theUSSR.

In order to accomplish this task it is necessary to establishwhat the social relations were in which the agents of produc-tion were integrated, and to reconstitute as clearly as possiblethe fundamental class struggles of the period being consid-ered.1 One must also take into account the diverse forms inwhich actual social relations were perceived by the massesand also by the members and leaders of the Party. Finally, wehave to establish the significance and social implications ofthe theoretical notions and political platforms around which aseries of conflicts took place.

This analysis must therefore deal with a complex objectiveprocess developing on several different levels, and entailingchanges each of which proceeded at its own pace, even thoughall were interlinked and affected each other. This compels usto renounce any sort of idealistic approach claiming to “ex-pound” the history of the USSR as the “realization” of acertain set of “ideas”—whether those of Marx, of Lenin, or ofStalin.

In other words, only a materialist treatment of the process oftransformation of the Soviet social formation will enable usreally to understand this process and draw lessons from it.

Such a treatment is all the more essential today because aseries of writings filled with open hostility to Marxism, and


mainly inspired by the works of Solzhenitsyn, are directed topresenting the history of the USSR as the “outcome” of theideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. This idealist ap-proach is, moreover, the “counterpart” of another one, similarthough with different “aims,” expressed in writings of pre-dominantly apologetic character which present the history ofthe USSR as the “outcome” of the decisions of the BolshevikParty and the Soviet state, and which furthermore assume that,generally speaking (that is, leaving aside a few “mistakes”which are considered to have been more or less rapidly cor-rected), these decisions were directly dictated by “Marxistprinciples,” resulting from analyses carried out in light ofthese principles.

A feature common to these idealist treatments of the history of the Soviet formation is that they relegate to the background(when they do not purely and simply ignore them) the move-ment of the objective contradictions, the various forms as-sumed by class struggles, and the role played by ways ofseeing reality that were inherited from the past and affectedthe aspirations of the masses and the views of the leadersalike. For a materialist analysis of the transformation processof the Soviet formation all these factors need to be reckonedwith.2

A materialist analysis also requires that we refuse to com-pare the history of the USSR with any ideal “model” fromwhich it is supposed to have “deviated” at a certain moment,so that from that moment everything “took the wrong turn-ing.”

It is therefore indispensable to analyze the Soviet socialformation in its originality, so as to understand the uniquecharacter of the gigantic upheavals that it has experienced.Reckoning with the specific features of the history of theUSSR does not debar us (quite the contrary) from drawinglessons from it for other countries and other periods, sincethis history, in its singularity, possesses a universal bearing forthe simple reason that the universal does not exist otherwisethan in the form of the particular. But this universal bearing


can be grasped only by means of a concrete analysis of themovement of the contradictions, especially of those that de-veloped on the plane of ideology.

The pages that follow will not “present chronologically” thedevelopment of the contradictions of the period 1923–1930.Attention will be focused on the moment when these con-tradictions converged, giving rise, in 1928–1930, to a crisiswhich appeared as a “general crisis of the NEP.” We shall see,moreover, that some vital aspects of this crisis were connectedwith the way in which the New Economic Policy was im-plemented, and with the ambiguous forms assumed by itsgradual abandonment. In any case, analyzing this crisis willenable us to perceive a series of contradictions as they man-ifested themselves in their most acute form, and to trace theway that they had developed and become intermingled in thecourse of the preceding years, so that light is thrown uponboth the conditions that brought the crisis of 1920–1930 to ahead and also the class consequences of this crisis.

The contradictions analyzed in this volume concern, in thefirst place, the working class. We have to see how the condi-tions under which this class produced (that is, the characteris-tics of the processes of production and reproduction) werechanged, but have also to describe the forms taken by the risein the level of consumption by the industrial workers, by thevarious relations of distribution, and by the way in which theworkers were organized. Special attention has been given tothe ways whereby the workers (and other social classes, too,especially the bourgeoisie—both the old one and that whichwas in process of formation) made their presence felt in theideological and political “machinery” through which theworking class could either develop its own initiative, or findits activities being oriented in one direction or another. Thesuccesses won during the years under consideration, no lessthan the setbacks suffered, had a considerable influence onthe form taken by the crisis of 1928–1930 and its outcome.

Likewise analyzed in this volume are the social relations inwhich the peasantry and its various strata were integrated, the


struggles that developed within the peasantry, and the con-tradictions that set the peasant masses against certain deci-sions of the Soviet government.

The contradictions analyzed often present themselves aseconomic ones. It is therefore appropriate to bring to light thesocial relations which both manifested and concealed them-selves in the form of prices, wages, and profits, and the classsignificance of the movements of industrial and agriculturalprices, movements which involved, to some extent at least, thefate of the alliance between the workers and the peasants.

Our analysis deals fundamentally with political contradic-tions, but these cannot be reduced (as is too often attempted)merely to the conflicts between the various oppositions andthe majority in the Political Bureau. Actually, these contradic-tions were also internal to the political line laid down by theParty leadership, a line that included contradictory elementswhich played a far from negligible role in the development ofthe crisis of 1928–1930. Moreover, this political line fre-quently contradicted the actual practice of the cadres of Partyand State, and the consequences of this practice reacted,sooner or later, upon the political line, leading to its transfor-mation.

Special attention must be given here to the limited means atthe disposal of the Bolshevik Party for putting many of itsdecisions into effect. This limitation was a product of history.It was connected with the Party’s inadequate presence amongthe peasantry (who formed the overwhelming majority of theSoviet people), and with the hardly proletarian character ofmany parts of the state machine,3 and so with the type ofrelations established between these parts of the state machineand the working people.

However, the limits restricting the activity of the BolshevikParty and also the possibilities for mass initiative were due notonly to political factors, but were also determined by the development of a certain number of ideological relations. Wemust therefore analyze quite closely the Bolshevik ideologicalformation and its transformations (which were themselvesmillion.


inseparable from those taking place in the social formation as awhole). We shall see that some of the conceptions whichplayed an increasing role in the Bolshevik Party, and whichwere also present among the masses, often led to the existenceof some of the developing contradictions being hidden fromview, to incorrect interpretation4 of those contradictions whoseexistence was recognized, or to the adoption of decisions thatwere more or less inadequate, in the sense that they failed intheir purpose and weakened the positions of the Soviet pro-letariat.

The characteristic features of the Bolshevik ideological for-mation reflected, in the first place, the limited experiencewhich the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet proletariat couldthen draw upon. They were connected also with the conflictsthat developed in the Party before October and during theyears 1917–1923, and so with the contradictions in theideological formation of that period. Finally, and above all,they resulted from the changes undergone by that ideologicalformation in face of the new problems that arose and thechanges in class relations within the Soviet formation itself.

The process of change in the Bolshevik ideological forma-tion produced contradictory effects. On the one hand, it led toan enrichment of Marxism, to a clearer perception of the polit-ical and economic tasks that the Soviet government had totackle. On the other, and at the same time, it contributed—owing, especially, to the weakness of the Party’s ties with thepeasant masses—to the strengthening of conceptions that de-parted from revolutionary Marxism. It should be noted, too,that these conceptions could in some cases be given illusory“title-deeds of legitimacy” through a mechanistic interpreta-tion of some formulation or other employed by Marx himself.

As we shall see, a significant example of this was the rolethat the Bolshevik Party gave to the formulations used by Marxin his writings of 1846, in which “society” appears as an“expressive totality” where the aggregate of social relationsseems to be determined by the technological conditions ofproduction. This happened with the well-known phrase: “The


hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord: the steammill, society with the industrial capitalist,” 5 which can beinterpreted in a narrowly economist-technicist sense.

A relatively large amount of space is given at the end of thisvolume to the problems posed by the changes in the Bolshevikideological formation. These problems have, indeed, a con-siderable bearing. Analysis of them enables us to understandbetter how and why a certain number of contradictions thatdeveloped in the Soviet social formation were imperfectlygrasped, so that the inadequate treatment they received re-sulted in a series of unsought consequences that were increas-ingly difficult to control.

What is said on this subject implies in the most direct fash-ion a lesson that is of universal application. Some of the con-ceptions alien to revolutionary Marxism that were present inthe Bolshevik ideological formation became, during the 1930s,“established truths” which influenced a number of the partiesbelonging to the Communist International. These partieswere thus induced, in historical conditions differing fromthose of the USSR, to commit mistakes that were similar tothose committed by the Bolshevik Party.6

Analysis of the contradictions and transformations of theBolshevik ideological formation is still relevant to present-dayconcerns. Even now, some of those who with justificationclaim to be Marxist-Leninists have not clearly recognizedwhat may be mistakes in certain formulations adopted by theBolshevik Party which played a negative role, in the transfor-mation process of the Soviet social formation, by weakeningthe leading role of the working class.

The identification of revolutionary Marxism with some ofthe formulations or theses which, though accepted by theBolshevik Party, were alien to Marxism, continues to do harmto the cause of socialism in another way. Thus, what theBolshevik Party said, especially from the end of the 1920s on,about the “socialist” significance of state ownership and aboutthe decisive role of the development of the productive forcesas the “driving force of social changes” is repeated today bythe Soviet revisionists. By reiterating these formulas they


laim to prove their “loyalty” to Marxism-Leninism. Otheropponents of socialism employ similar identifications, and theresults ensuing from the theses to which they relate, in orderto reject what the Soviet revolution has accomplished andreject, also, the teachings of revolutionary Marxism, withoutwhich it is impossible to carry forward to victory the strugglefor socialism.

At the heart of the analyses that follow, therefore, lies thequestion of the relation between the process of change affect-ing the Soviet social formation and that which affected theBolshevik ideological formation. This is a question of capitalimportance which I have been able only to begin to deal withhere. Perhaps my essay may serve as the starting point for“setting right-way-up” the problem referred to by means ofthe mistaken expression “the personality cult.” What is meantthereby really took shape only in the 1930s and can thereforeby analyzed only in my next volume. Nevertheless, it is notwithout value to make a few methodological observations onthe subject straightaway.

In the first place, it must be said that, in order to dealrigorously with this question, on the basis of historical mate-rialism, one needs to analyze first of all the transformationprocess of the Soviet social formation and its articulation withthat of the Bolshevik ideological formation. The question ofStalin cannot be presented correctly unless it is situated inrelation to this dual process. Historically, Stalin was the prod-uct of this process, not its “author.” To be sure, his role wasconsiderable, but the line followed by his acts and decisionscannot be separated either from the relations of strength be-tween classes, or from the means available to the BolshevikParty, or from the ideas that were predominant in the Partyand among the masses. It is by taking strict account of all theseobjective determining factors that one can analyze the activityof the Bolshevik Party, and so of Stalin, and understand howthis activity contributed to maintaining some of the conquestsof October, consolidating Soviet power, and, at the same time,undermining some of these conquests by allowing the de-velopment of practices and social relations which greatly


weakened the leading role of the Soviet proletariat and pro-foundly shook the alliance between the workers and the peas-ants. But only concrete analysis applied to the specific formsof the changes undergone by the Soviet social formation canenable us to tackle these questions correctly.

Such a concrete analysis shows also to what extent Stalinwas, above all, in most cases, the man who concentrated sys-tematically the views of the leading circles of the Party andsome of the aspirations of a section of the Soviet masses. Thenature of these views and these aspirations was not the same atall moments in the history of the Soviet formation, and there-fore the “question of Stalin” can be tackled correctly only by“periodizing” it.

In any case, in the following pages I am not concerned withthese problems, since treatment of them is necessarily subor-dinate to a preliminary analysis of the process of changethrough which the Sovie t formation has passed.

Notes

1. Our knowledge of these struggles can, alas, only be very incom-plete. The most significant factors can, of course, be grasped byreference to the published documents, by interpreting thespeeches of the Soviet leaders and the decisions adopted by theParty. But a more thorough knowledge of the struggles and of thestate of mind of the masses, and especially of the different strata-composing them, will not be achieved until later, when archiveswhich are at present closed to researchers are opened to them,and, above all, when, through a mighty mass movement of concernto know their past, the Soviet people themselves come to partici-pate in the reconstitution of their own history. Meanwhile, onlythe most outstanding developments can be appreciated—which isalready a great deal.

2. In J. Elleinstein’s book, Histoire du phénomène stalinien(English-language translation, The Stalin Phenomenon), we findan idealist approach and positions characteristic of mechanicalmaterialism intermingled. The developments experienced by the


USSR are shown as the result of a certain conception of socialism“adapted” to the specific historical conditions of Russia—to thelow level of the productive forces in that country at the start of theRevolution and to the initial situation of its masses. Ellein-stein writes of “a people in rags and without education” (Englishtranslation, p. 32) and the burden of “Tsarist tradition and Or-thodox ritual” (ibid., p. 56). It is on this “historical terrain, verydifferent from that of France” that a specific “type of socialism” issaid to have developed (French edition, p. 247; not included inthe English translation). A “myth of origin” thus does duty foranalysis of a complex process of transformation. Rejection of thismyth does not mean, of course, denying that the effects producedupon the Soviet social formation by a number of contradictionsthat were not brought under control (effects the bearing of whichis universal, and therefore capable of appearing elsewhere than inthe Soviet Union) did take on forms that were specifically Rus-sian. However, what matters when we are trying to draw lessonsfrom the history of the Soviet Union is the content of universalimplication to be found in the changes that that country hasundergone: this is why we need to grasp them in their specificforms (which are to be “associated” with the specific Russian“terrain”), but also to go beyond the particularity of these forms.

3. We need only recall what Lenin had to say on the matter: “Theapparatus we call ours is, in fact, still quite alien to us, it is abourgeois and tsarist hotchpotch . . . ” (Lenin, CW, vol. 36, p. 606).On this point see volume I of the present work, p. 329. For lack ofmass action to revolutionize this “apparatus,” its characteristicfeatures could not be radically altered.

4. The most telling example of a mistaken interpretation is providedby the attempt made to account for the “bureaucratic distortions”of the state machinery by attributing these exclusively to thepredominance of small-scale production. Actually, these distor-tions were also connected with the development of centralisticpolitical relations (which was why they got worse during the1930s, when small-scale peasant production was tending to disap-pear), a development that was not combated by the BolshevikParty since it considered that the forms of centralization character-istic of capitalism corresponded to the requirements for domina-tion by society over the processes of production and reproduction.

5. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, in Marx and Engels, CollectedWorks, vol. 6, p. 166.


6. Of course, if a particular Communist Party was influenced by someof the mistaken theses upheld by the Bolshevik Party and theComintern, the reason for this must be sought in the social prac-tice of this Party, in its relations with the various classes ofsociety, in its internal structure, and in its greater or lessercapacity to generate criticism and self-criticism, drawing up thebalance sheet of its own experience and learning lessons there-from.

21

Introduction to the “second period”

The purpose of this volume is to show the movement of thecontradictions leading to the economic and political crisis thatopened at the beginning of 1928 and culminated, from the endof 1929, in the complete abandonment of the New EconomicPolicy (NEP) which had been inaugurated in 1921.1 Thisabandonment corresponded to a radical alteration of politicalline. The decisive moment of this alteration was called byStalin himself the “great turn” or “great change.”2

The analyses that follow relate to the contradictions that ledto this abandonment, to the NEP itself, and to the “greatchange” that marked the real ending of it.

Only as clear a view as can be obtained of the interweavingand transformation of the contradictions characteristic of theSoviet formation between 1923 and 1929 can enable us toappreciate the concrete conditions under which the USSRentered, in 1930, a new period of collectivization and indus-trialization, that of the Five-Year Plans. That new period willbe studied in a subsequent volume.

I. The NEP as a policy of alliance betweenthe workers and the peasants

The NEP is often discussed as though it were a mere “eco-nomic policy.” The very name given to it (“New EconomicPolicy”) suggests such an interpretation, and the measurestaken initially in order to implement it seem to have aimedmainly at restoring a certain amount of “freedom of trade” and


leaving the peasants a margin of initiative much wider thanthey had enjoyed during “war communism.”

At the beginning of 1922, at the time of the Eleventh Con-gress of the Bolshevik Party, Lenin was still saying: “Thechief thing the people, all the working people, want today isnothing but help in their desperate hunger and need.” 3

Nevertheless, over and above immediate appearances(which were also a reality), and the confusion caused by theexpression “New Economic Policy,” the NEP was very muchmore than an “economic policy.”4 It was also very much morethan a policy of “concessions” made to the peasantry and tosome Russian and foreign capitalists.

Actually, the NEP was something other than a mere “re-treat,” the metaphor that was first used to define it. It was anactive alliance between the working class and the peasantry:an alliance that was more and more clearly defined by Leninas intended not just to ensure “restoration of the economybut also to make it possible to lead the peasant masses alongthe road to socialism, through the aid—economic, ideological,and political—brought to them by the proletariat.5

The NEP as an active alliance between the peasantry andthe proletariat in power was a special form of the dictatorshipof the proletariat, a form corresponding to the specific condi-tions prevailing in Soviet Russia in the 1920s.

The special features of the class alliance which the NEPaimed to establish should not cause us to forget that thisalliance was in strict conformity with the fundamental princi-ples of Marxism. Marx opposed Lassalle, for whom, in relationto the working class, the other social classes constituted “onereactionary mass.” In a passage written in June 1919—longbefore the formulation of the NEP—Lenin stressed that thedictatorship of the proletariat does not mean a dictatorship ofthe working class over the masses in general, but is an alliancebetween classes. He declared that whoever “has not undertood this from reading Marx’s Capital has understood nothingin Marx, understood nothing in Socialism . . .” 6

After recalling that the dictatorship of the proletariat is thecontinuation of the class struggle in new forms, Lenin added:


The dictatorship of the proletariat is a specific form of classalliance between the proletariat, the vanguard of the workingpeople, and the numerous non-proletarian strata of the workingpeople (petty bourgeoisie, small proprietors, the peasantry, the intelli-gentsia, etc.) or the majority of these strata, an allianceagainst capital, an alliance whose aim is the complete overthrowof capital, complete suppression of the resistance offered by thebourgeoisie as well as of attempts at restoration on its part, analliance for the final establishment and consolidation ofsocialism [my emphasis—C. B.].7

For Lenin the NEP was thus neither a mere “economicpolicy” nor a mere “retreat”: it was a special form of thedictatorship of the proletariat, requiring respect for a certainnumber of political orientations and fundamental principles.

The necessity of this form under the conditions of SovietRussia was one of the lessons that Lenin drew from “warcommunism.” That experience had shown that it was impera-tive to replace the attempted “frontal attack” characteristic ofthe years 1918–1920 by a war of position. This “war” couldlead to the triumph of socialism provided that the ruling partyclearly perceived that the terrain it stood upon at the outsetwas one of real social relations which were still capitalist, andprovided that it set itself the task of helping to bring about theconditions needed if these relations were to be controlled andtransformed, by drawing the peasant masses into this newstruggle, which was a struggle for socialism.

In his closing speech at the Eleventh Congress of the Bol-shevik Party, delivered on April 2, 1922, Lenin was particu-larly explicit on this point. On the one hand, he showed thatthe phase of “retreat” which had at first characterized the NEP(and which had opened at the beginning of 1921) was at anend, that a stop must be put to that “retreat,” though not to theNEP itself. On the other hand, he emphasized two principles:first, the new advance must be cautious (in conformity withthe requirements of positional warfare), and, secondly andespecially, this advance must be made together with the peas-antry.

The following formulation is particularly significant: “The


main thing now is to advance as an immeasurably wider andlarger mass, and only together with the peasantry, proving tothem by deeds, in practice, by experience, that we are learn-ing and that we shall learn to assist them, to lead them for-ward.”8

The two key expressions in this formulation are: (1) “toadvance,” which shows that in 1922, as Lenin saw it, the NEPmust make it possible to go forward (and not merely to “restorethe productive forces”); and (2) “only together with the peas-antry” which implies that the advance (the march towardsocialism) must be made together with the peasant masses,whom the Party must “learn to assist.”

In January 1923 Lenin gave concrete definition to one of theforms that this advance toward socialism should assume so faras the peasantry was concerned: “If the whole of the peasantryhad been organised in co-operatives, we would by now havebeen standing with both feet on the soil of socialism.” In thesame passage Lenin stressed again that, under the dictatorshipof the proletariat, a general development of cooperatives couldlead to socialism provided that it resulted not from economicand political coercion, but from the will of the peasant massesthemselves, which accounts for this remark: “The organisationof the entire peasantry in co-operative societies presupposes astandard of culture among the peasants . . . that cannot, infact, be achieved without a cultural revolution.” 9

The phrase quoted is of decisive importance, even thoughin this particular passage the content of the expression “cul-tural revolution” remains rather vague.

However, the way in which the NEP actually developed didnot depend exclusively on the Party’s rallying to the princi-ples proclaimed. What was essential was the concrete contentof this “rallying,” the mode of intervention in the class strug-gles which it determined, and the Party’s practical capacity toput into deeds the measures it resolved upon. It was all thatwhich constituted the reality of the policy followed during theNEP, and which had an influence—greater or less, from caseto case—on the process of reproduction and transformation of


social relations that took place between 1923 and 1928, andculminated in the general crisis of the years 1928 and 1929.

The analysis of the requirements and the limitations of theNEP made by the majority of the Bolshevik Party leadershipwas far from stable and consistent. It varied from time to timeand was not the same for all members of the CC.

Each interpretation appeared as the result of the combiningof two fundamental tendencies concerning the significance tobe accorded to the NEP. At different moments, one of thesetendencies was more or less predominant; and this appliedboth to the Party majority itself and to the positions taken upby one and the same Party leader.

One of these tendencies led to the NEP being reduced to amere “economic policy,” a “retreat,” to which one had toresign oneself for the time being, until the situation shouldmake it possible to “get rid of the NEP”10 and resume theoffensive. This tendency implicitly assumed that no real of-fensive could be undertaken until the NEP had been aban-doned.

The other tendency—the one that was in closer conformity toLenin’s own line of thought11—declared that the NEP was above all a specific form of the alliance between the workersand the peasants, and that this form was capable of modifica-tion, especially in response to the rallying of the peasantmasses to the cooperatives and to collective production. Theinterpretations in which this attitude was dominant did notconsider that it was necessary to “get rid of” the NEP in thenear future, but merely to transform it.

Predominance of the first of these two tendencies meant, iftaken to extremes, looking on the NEP as a capitalist road ofdevelopment, from which followed the conclusion that itwould have to be abandoned as soon as conditions made thispossible.

Predominance of the second tendency meant, on the con-trary, agreeing that the NEP made development along thesocialist road possible, provided that the Party took the ap-propriate measures. This interpretation thus did not present as


mutually irreconcilable pursuit of the NEP and advance to-ward socialism. It did not, however, deny that this advancemight include elements of subordinated capitalist develop-ment, the effects of which must be gradually subjected tocontrol and then transformed by the class struggle.

Over and above all hesitations and temporary fluctuations,the way the NEP was predominantly interpreted by the lead-ership of the Bolshevik Party was governed by an historicaldevelopment. The interpretation that prevailed in the firsthistorical period (until 1925) saw in the NEP essentially apolicy of class alliances that was relatively lasting. It tended,however, to ascribe to this alliance a content that was mainlyeconomic. One must emphasize that this was only a tendency,and did not rule out the introduction of measures aimingdirectly to change the political relations between theBolshevik Party and the peasantry—such as the policy of “re-vitalizing” the rural soviets.

In a second phase—beginning at the end of 1925, when itwas proclaimed that the “restoration period” had been com-pleted (this was not true, since at that time the productiveforces of agriculture had not yet been fully “restored”)—theidea developed to an increasing extent that the NEP wasessentially provisional in character. In practice this idea foundexpression in a growing gap between statements of principle,which affirmed positions that were basically unchanged, andthe measures concretely adopted and implemented. Actually,these measures represented to an ever greater degree a viola-tion, on the plane of political practice, of some of the re-quirements of the NEP, especially as regards relations with thepeasant masses. What was going on, therefore, was a gradualabandonment of all that the NEP stood for as a policy ofactive alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry.Thus, what appeared in 1928–1929 to be a “crisis of the NEP”was, in reality, a crisis caused by nonapplication of theNEP—a crisis of the worker-peasant alliance.

The changes affecting the predominant interpretation of theNEP by the Bolshevik Party enable us to understand thenature of certain decisions taken by the Party during the years


1923–1929, but they are far from supplying an adequate ex-planation of them. On the one hand, a considerable number ofdecisions were taken (especially from 1928 on) under thepressure of immediate difficulties. They were more or lessimprovised, and the changes in the way that the NEP wasinterpreted were then brought in, more in order to furnishretrospective justification for decisions already taken than as afactor determining these decisions.

On the other hand, and especially, these changes in thepredominant interpretation of the NEP need to be explainedthemselves. This explanation can be found only by analyzingthe changes that took place in the Bolshevik ideological forma-tion and by relating these changes to their material basis; thesuccesses and failures of the policy followed, the changes inrelations of strength between the classes, and the generalmovement of the economic and social contradictions that weresubject to control to a greater or lesser degree.

II. The NEP as an “economic policy” andits results down to 1927

The most immediate aim of the NEP was to rescue the coun-try from the famine and economic chaos in which it was sunkafter four years of imperialist war followed by three years ofcivil war and foreign intervention. At the beginning, theseeconomic tasks were also directly political tasks.

What mattered for the Soviet government was, first andforemost, to take the measures needed if the essentialbranches of production were quickly to recover their prewarlevels, and then to surpass these levels, taking account of thenew social and political conditions resulting from the OctoberRevolution. By achieving this aim the Soviet governmentscored a political victory. It showed its power to save thecountry from the tremendous difficulties into which it wasplunged at the end of the civil war. Thanks to the measurestaken, and, above all, to the immense effort and labor put in by


the workers and peasants, the results obtained were excep-tionally great.

(a) Agricultural production

In 1926-1927 agricultural production took a leap forward.Its value, in prewar prices, reached 11.17 milliard roubles,which meant an advance of over 100 percent on 1921–1922and 6 percent on 1913—in comparison with 1925–1926, theprevious year, when the advance was 5 percent.12 In 1926–1927 the gross yield of grain was more than 25 percent inexcess of that in 1922–1923: it came to about 76.4 millionmetric tons, as against 74.5 in 1925–1926.13 At that moment,however, the level of the prewar grain harvest (82.6 millionmetric tons was the average for the years 1909 to 191314) hadnot been fully attained; but a number of other branches ofagricultural production were progressing, despite the inade-quacy and obsolescence of the equipment available on mostfarms.

The years between 1921–1922 and 1926–1927 thus saw aremarkable advance in agriculture. However, this advancewas very uneven between one region and another and be-tween different branches of agriculture. Furthermore, after1925–1926, agricultural production tended to stagnate. Thisslowing-down was to have important political consequences.

(b) Industrial production

During the NEP, industrial production, too, made remark-able progress. Production in 1926–1927 was, in terms of vol-ume, three times that of 1921–1922. However, the progressachieved made up mainly for the previous decline; and indus-trial production in 1926–1927 was only 4 percent more thanprewar, whereas it was 15.6 percent more than in the preced-ing year.15

If we take the processing industry alone, the progress madewas very substantial. In 1927 the index for this branch ofproduction (with 1913 as 100) stood at 114.5. This progress


continued, moreover, during the two subsequent years. In1929 the index for this branch stood at 181.4, which put theUSSR at the head of all the countries of Europe for growthin production by manufacturing industry as compared withprewar.16

If we compare the progress made by the different branchesof industry (manufacturing and extractive), we find that therates of progress were highly uneven. In 1926–1927 produc-tion of coal and oil surpassed the prewar level to a markeddegree. Iron and steel lagged behind. As for production ofcotton goods, it exceeded the prewar figure by 70 percent.17

The progress in industrial production of consumer goodsdid not show the same signs of slowing down as becameapparent in agriculture. When we compare it with the increasein population, we see that, taken as a whole, it had progressedat a faster rate: between 1913 and 1926 the population grew by7 percent, reaching the figure of 147 million, 18 million ofwhom lived in towns; whereas the index of industrial produc-tion of consumer goods reached 120 in 1928 (100 being, in thiscase, 1914).18

(c) The development of exchange

One of the immediate aims of the NEP was a rapid de-velopment of exchange between town and country (a de-velopment which formed the material basis for the alliancebetween the workers and the peasants). It was an aim to beattained not only through increased production but alsothrough the establishment of economic relations satisfactory tothe peasants—who, under “war communism,” had furnishedsupplies to the towns while receiving hardly any products inreturn.

The NEP was, in fact, marked by an extensive developmentof commodity exchange, by restoration of the role of money,by the existence of a vast “free market,” and by the influenceof price movements upon the supply of and demand for goodsand by then influence on the orientation of some investments.Nevertheless, the years beginning in 1921 also saw the de-


veloping activity of a group of state organs whose operationsaimed at safeguarding expanded reproduction, to some extent,from the direct influence of commodity relations, through theincreasing role played by planning, centralization of fiscalrevenue, and the carrying out of investment programs.

The figures available do not enable us to estimate preciselyhow exchange evolved in comparison with 1913. It is certain,however, that the amount of agricultural produce supplied tothe towns and urban trade by the peasants, in order to obtainthe money that they needed to pay their taxes, was much lessin 1926 than in 1913. Thereafter, the bulk of the selling doneby the peasants was intended to pay for their purchases ofindustrial goods.

Taken as a whole, the trade turnover in 1926–1927 was 2.5times what it had been in 1923–1924. Even if we allow for thefact that during this period prices increased by about 50 per-cent, the overall volume of exchange increased by more than60 percent in three years. Besides, these figures do not includethe very big increase in sales made by the peasants in theurban markets, sales which between 1922–1923 and 1924–1925 multiplied by 3.3 (at current prices) and constituted atthe later date more than one-third of the retail trade turn-over.19

Another proof of the substantial increase in the volume ofexchange is provided by the rapid advance in the tonnagecarried by the railways, which was multiplied more thanthreefold between 1922 and 1927, the year when it exceededthe level of 1913 by 5 percent.

These few pointers serve to demonstrate the extent of theeconomic recovery accomplished between 1922 and 1927.The progress in most branches of production and exchangecontinued, moreover, after 1927, so that the contrast betweenthis advance and the crisis experienced in the sphere of “pro-curement” of grain stands out all the more strikingly.

To account for this crisis and the way it developed we shallneed to study the contradictory forms assumed by theworker-peasant alliance. This study is all the more necessarybecause the importance and the role of these contradictionsare usually much underestimated.


III. The consolidation of theworker-peasant alliance and thecontradictions in the Soviet socialformation in 1923–1929

The consolidation of the worker-peasant alliance between1923 and 1927 was based primarily upon the constructivework carried out under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party.This work was done in the main, as we have seen, in thesphere of production and exchange, but it was a great dealwider in scope than that.

In the sphere of education, there was an unprecedentedincrease in the numbers of people attending school. Thefigure for pupils in primary and secondary schools increased,in round figures, from 7.9 million in 1914–1915 to 11.5 millionin 1927–1928.20 As compared with 1922–1923, the increase innumbers was 1.4 million in the towns and 2.8 million in thecountryside.21 True—and I shall come back to this point—thecontent and methods of the teaching given were far fromcorresponding fully to what was needed for the building ofsocialism and to what was implicit in the role that the workersand peasants were supposed to play in that task. Nevertheless,the quantitative progress achieved was remarkable, and realefforts were made to establish a system of education linkedwith practical work in production.

In the sphere of reading by the masses, great progress wasrealized. Thus, the number of books in the public libraries, in1927, was 43.5 million in the towns (as against 4.7 million in1913), and 25.7 million in the country areas (as against 4.2million in 1913).22 This progress was all the more significantbecause, on the whole, what was published after the OctoberRevolution was marked by a new, revolutionary spirit, andbecause the controversies of that period were wide-rangingenough to permit the expression of such diverse trends ofthought, dogmatic tendencies and a stereotyped style werelargely avoided. All the same, we must not lose sight of the factthat, despite what had been achieved, only a little over one-half of the inhabitants between nine and forty-nine years ofage could read and write when the census of 1926 was taken.


In the sphere of health, the number of doctors increasedfrom 20,000 in 1913 to 63,000 in 1928,23 despite the substantialemigration of doctors between 1918 and 1923. The number ofpractitioners present in the rural districts increased rapidly,but in proportion to the number of inhabitants, still remainedmuch lower than in the towns. Improvements in material andsanitary conditions brought about a fall in the death rate from21.7 percent in 1924 to 18.8 percent in 1927.

The consolidation of Soviet power and of the worker-peasant alliance had, of course, a political basis—in particular,the special attention that the Bolshevik Party gave to the peas-ant question (in spite of the serious limitations imposed uponits activity by the Party’s weak presence among the ruralmasses). This consolidation was bound up with the develop-ment of the mass organizations of the working class (mainly,the trade unions) and of the peasantry (mainly, the ruralsoviets and the agricultural cooperatives).24

The consolidation of Soviet power and of the worker-peasant alliance took place, inevitably, under contradictoryconditions. It is the way in which these contradictions de-veloped, became interconnected, and were dealt with thatprovides the explanation for what the NEP was, how it wastransformed, and why it culminated in a “crisis” expressing itsabandonment.

The basic contradiction was one that opposed the proletariatto the bourgeoisie. During the NEP this contradiction pre-sented itself particularly in the form of the contradiction be-tween the private sector and the state and cooperative sector,for the latter was, in the main, directed by the Soviet state,itself directed by the Bolshevik Party, the instrument of thedictatorship of the proletariat. In 1928 this sector contributed44 percent of the national income, 82.4 percent of the grossvalue of industrial production, and accounted for 76.4 percentof the turnover of the retail trade enterprises. On the otherhand, only 3.3 percent of the gross value of agricultural pro-duction came from this sector.25 As we shall see, the decisiverole played by the private sector in agriculture, and the con-siderable one played by private trade (combined with thegrowing contradictions in the policy followed by the Bol-


shevik Party from 1926 on), partly explain the crisis thatmarked the years 1928 and 1929, and the distinctive featuresof that crisis.

However, the contradictions between the proletariat andthe bourgeoisie assumed other forms as well, and these wemust analyze—especially those which opposed the workingclass to the managers of enterprises, both “private” and state-owned, in particular when the latter obstructed the workers’initiative. This contradiction became acute during the secondhalf of 1928.

During the years 1923–1929 an important role was playedby the contradiction which opposed—more or less sharply atdifferent times—the peasantry to the Soviet government. In1929 this contradiction became a decisive one, owing to theway with which it was dealt. It became interwoven with othercontradictions, principally that which made the peasantry acontradictory unity, divided into kulaki (rich peasants), bed-nyaki (poor peasants), and serednyaki (middle peasants).

The vital significance of the supplying of grain to the townsmeant that the impact which the development of these con-tradictions had upon “grain procurement”26 acquired decisiveimportance. Reciprocally, it was on this plane that a series ofmeasures were taken that might either consolidate or disturbthe worker-peasant alliance. Owing to the way in which theywere put into effect, under conditions that we must analyze,the measures taken from 1928 on led progressively to com-plete abandonment of the NEP.

IV. Grain procurement, its fluctuations,and the state of the worker-peasantalliance

The term “procurement” refers to the operations for pur-chasing agricultural produce carried out by the state’s eco-nomic organs and by the officially recognized network ofcooperatives.

The regular functioning of procurement was decisively im-


portant. Politically, its smooth progress constituted the out-ward sign that one of the material foundations of the worker-peasant alliance was being consolidated. Economically, thissmooth progress ensured the supplies needed by the townsand by industry. It contributed to a certain degree of pricestability, and to the balance of payments in foreign trade. Inthe last-mentioned connection, indeed, grain procurementplayed a role of central importance, for exports of grain wereone of the principal sources from which the foreign exchangewas obtained for financing imports, especially those that couldhelp industry to develop.

During the NEP, procurement was carried on in competi-tion with the purchasing activities of the “private sector.” Inprinciple—and this was an essential aspect of the NEP fromthe standpoint of the worker-peasant alliance—procurementhad to be effected on the basis of the prices at which thepeasants were willing to sell, and had to involve only suchquantities as the peasants were ready to deliver. The princi-ples of the NEP implied that procurement must be a form ofmarketing and not a form of requisition or taxation at theexpense of the peasantry. And that was, in fact, how procure-ment worked down to the end of 1927.

Procurement was highly important for the peasantry, towhom it guaranteed stable outlets for their produce. It alsoconstituted one of the bases for economic planning, sincecorrect realization of economic plans largely depended onsatisfactory functioning of the operations for purchase of ag-ricultural produce.

In principle, the intervention of the procurement agencieson a sufficiently large scale enabled these agencies to exertoverall control over the prices at which this produce wasmarketed—which meant also controlling the prices that pre-vailed in “private” trade. This intervention thus constituted, ifit was carried out under proper conditions, an instrument forimplementing a price policy in conformity with the needs ofthe worker-peasant alliance. During the first years of theNEP, the Soviet government tried to practice such a pricepolicy. It did not always succeed, however, for reasons towhich we shall have to return.


Finally, it should be added that the development of pro-curement was conceived not merely as an instrument to se-cure increasing control over the market, but also as a means ofgradually ousting private trade. The struggle to oust privatetrade was one of the forms of the class struggle during theNEP: it aimed to strengthen the direct economic ties unitingthe peasantry with the Soviet government.

At the Eleventh Party Congress, in 1922, Lenin had stressedthat, in order to strengthen the worker-peasant alliance, theCommunists appointed to head the central state and coopera-tive trading organs must beat the capitalists on their ownground. “Here is something we must do now in the economicfield. We must win the competition against the ordinary shopassistant, the ordinary capitalist, the merchant, who will go tothe peasant without arguing about communism.” 27

Lenin explained that the task of the industrial and commer-cial organs of the Soviet government was to ensure economiclinkage with the peasantry by showing that it could satisfythe peasants’ needs better than private capital could. Headded: “Here the ‘last and decisive battle’ is impending; herethere are no political or any other flanking movements that wecan undertake, because this is a test in competition with privatecapital. Either we pass this test in competition with privatecapital, or we fail completely.”28

These principles ratified by the Eleventh Party Congress,were adhered to in the main until 1927. The increasing roleplayed by the state and cooperative sector in the generalsphere of trade therefore testified to its vitality, to its increas-ing capacity to carry out procurement in the true sense of theword. The reader must be given an idea of this sector’s overalldevelopment by showing what its share was in commercialoperations as a whole. Here are some figures.

On the eve of the final crisis of the NEP (1926–1927),wholesale trade was already largely concentrated in the stateand cooperative sector. The state’s organs dealt with 50.2percent of it, as against 5.1 percent covered by private trade;the balance of 44.7 percent was handled by cooperative trade,which was itself subject to directive from the state’s organs.29

Concentration of wholesale trade under the direct control of


the Soviet government continued to progress after 1927, buthis progress was thenceforth increasingly due to the applica-tion of regulatory measures—which nevertheless did notsuffice to prevent a series of contradictions from developing inthe sphere of trade.

In retail trade the position held by the state and cooperativeagencies was less clearly dominant than in wholesale trade,but in 1926–1927 they were responsible for the greater part ofthis, too. At that time they contributed 13.3 percent and 49.8percent, respectively, of the retail trade turnover, leaving 36.9percent to private traders. In 1928 and 1929 the share held bythe latter fell to 22.5 percent and then to 13.5 percent.30

Despite the big role played by state and cooperative trade, itdid not succeed in accomplishing all the aims assigned to it bythe Bolshevik Party and the Soviet government, especially asregards prices and the quantities that it was expected to buy orsell. We shall see this in detail when we come to examine howthe final crisis of the NEP developed.

Let us note for the moment that a considerable contradictionappeared between private trade and state and cooperativetrade in the matter of prices. Private traders resold at priceshigher than those charged by the state and cooperative organs,and so were able to offer the peasants better prices for theirproducts; this had a harmful effect on the procurement opera-tions that the state endeavored to carry out on the basis ofstable prices. This contradiction stimulated the adoption ofadministrative measures directed against private trade, butsuch measures often seemed to the peasants to be reasons whythey were losing money, or being deprived of opportunities tomake more money.

In any case, in 1926–1927, state and cooperative trade hadsucceeded in attaining a predominant position without havinghad recourse, thus far (at any rate, on any large scale), tomeasures of prohibition.

According to the directives laid down by the Party in aresolution adopted at the end of 1927 by the Fifteenth Con-gress,31 state and cooperative trade had to follow the “pricepolicy” decided by the Party, to enable the Soviet state to


carry on an active policy in the buying and selling of produce,and to subordinate commerce to the objectives of the plan.

In reality, state and cooperative trade did not at that timesucceed in gaining the control over commercial operationsthat was expected of it. This became especially clear in thecrucial sphere of grain procurement. Here, difficulties arose inthe most striking way and with the most seriousconsequences—a situation which we must now proceed toexamine.

(a) The progress, and then the crisis, ofprocurement

The “procurement crisis” that began in 1927–1928 con-cerned, first and foremost, grain—a group of products whichplayed an essential role in the feeding of the townspeople andin Soviet exports at that time. It is therefore to the evolution ofgrain procurement that we must pay attention.

It will first be observed that in 1926–1927 procurementinvolved 10.59 million metric tons. Like the harvest of thatyear, it was much bigger than that of the previous year (whichhad been 8.41 million metric tons32 and had been carried outwith some difficulty.

In 1927–1928 the harvest was less abundant than in theprevious year, amounting to 73.6 million metric tons,33 or 2.8million less than in 1926–1927 and 0.9 million less than in1925–1926. Procurement on a slightly smaller scale than in1925–1926 was to be expected: actually, the reduction wassubstantial, and it took place in two phases, a point thatdeserves attention.

At first there was a moderate reduction: between July andOctober 1927 procurement involved 3.74 million metric tons,as against 3.96 million metric tons in the same months of theprevious year, or a reduction of 5.4 percent—less in valuewhen the reduction in the harvest is taken into account. Then,between November and December, matters took a dramaticturn. During those two months procurement accounted for nomore than 1.39 million metric tons, which meant a reduction


of nearly 55 percent on the corresponding period of 1926–1927.34

Actually, the reduction was not surprising, given the shrink-age in the size of the harvest. Nevertheless, this shortfall in procure-ment jeopardized the supply of food to the towns. Italso jeopardized—and this was no less important for the Bol-shevik Party—realization of the objectives of the procurementplan, which was itself connected with the export plan.Pro-curement targets had been increased by 1.7 million metrictons over the figure for the preceding year,35 despite the re-duction in the harvest. The Party was therefore impelled toreact fast.

(b) The “emergency measures” and theirimmediate consequences

The way in which the Party and the government reacted tothe serious fall in the amount of grain procured resulted from arelatively simple analysis of the situation—or rather from anoversimplified analysis which took account of only one aspectof the contradictions developing in the countryside, an aspectwhich (as will be seen) was not, in fact, the principal one.

Generally speaking, the Bolshevik Party considered that thereduction in procurement was due mainly to holding back ofgrain by the rich peasants, to a sort of “kulaks’ strike.”36 Hav-ing analyzed the situation in this way, the Party leadershiptook the view, at the beginning of 1928, that this “strike” mustbe answered with restraints and requisitions. These werewhat came to be called the “extraordinary” or “emergencymeasures,” terms intended to emphasize the temporary charac-ter of the measures taken.

In themselves the “emergency measures” need not havedone fundamental violence to the principles of the NEP(which implied that recourse should not be had to requi-sitions), for they were supposed to apply exclusively to kulaksguilty of illegal hoarding and speculation. Their “legal basis”was Article 107 of the Penal Code, adopted in 1926. They


were regarded as being one of the forms of the class struggleaimed, as the Fifteenth Congress resolution put it, at “restrict-ing the exploiting tendencies of the rural bourgeoisie.”37

If the emergency measures had in fact been applied merelyto the quantity of grain that could be seized from the kulakfarms, they would not have enabled the procurement agenciesto realize their plan, which had very high targets.

In practice, therefore, the emergency measures turned intosomething quite different from a struggle against speculationby kulaks. They constituted a measure of “economic policy”aimed at ensuring, at all costs, transference to the state’sgranaries of a quantity of grain as near as possible to that pro-vided for in the procurement plan. In order that this planmight be realized, the state organs and the local Party cadreswere given very strict instructions. The cadres werethreatened with penalties in the event that the procurementproved inadequate. As a result of the pressure brought to bear onthem, the local officials were led to requisition quantities ofgrain very much larger than those they could find on the farmsof the kulaks alone. Thus, the emergency measures hit notonly the kulaks but also, and above all, the middle peasantsand even some of the poor peasants.38 Mikoyan, who was incharge of the administrative apparatus entrusted with pro-curement (the Commissariat of Trade), actually noted that thebulk of the wheat “surplus” was held by the middle peasants,and that the wheat confiscated from them was taken by meansof measures that were officially denounced as “harmful, il-legal and inadmissible.”39 However, the local organs of theBolshevik Party insisted on the necessity, if the procurementtargets were to be attained, of seizing the grain belonging tothe middle peasants. A Party circular issued in the North-Caucasian Region (Krai) gave the following guidelines:

While continuing to drain the surplus grain from kulak house-holds, and employing whatever means are necessary to encour-age them to sell their surplus to the state, we must bear in mindthat the main bulk of the grain reserves is, nevertheless, in thehands of the middle peasants. For this reason, the February


procurements will be made mainly at the expense of the sered-nyaks in the villages, that is to say they will be amassed in smallquantities.40

Adoption of these practices gave rise to a crisis in numerousregions and provoked discontent on the part of wide strata ofthe peasantry, who thought that a return to the methods of“war communism” was going on.

The Party’s General Secretariat received disturbing reportsabout the way in which the emergency measures were beingapplied, and the reactions they were arousing among thepeasantry. On February 13, 1928, Stalin sent out a circular toall Party organizations summarizing the situation which hadled to the emergency measures being adopted and admittingthat mistakes had previously been committed by the Party,including the CC.41 He welcomed the results obtained by theemergency measures, so far as the amount of grain procuredwas concerned, but denounced “distortions and excesses” thathad been committed in the villages and that might “createnew difficulties.” Stalin gave as examples of such excesses“compulsory subscription to the agricultural loan, organisa-tion of substitutes for the old interception squads, and, lastly,abuse of powers of arrest, unlawful confiscation of grainsurpluses, etc.” concluding that “a definite stop must be put toall such practices.”42

These warnings resulted in a certain falling-off in the quan-tity of grain procured during March. Nevertheless, the CCmeeting at the beginning of April adopted a resolution stres-sing the need for a rapid return to procurement proceduresthat conformed to the requirements of the NEP. 43

The pressure on the peasants, then, was lightened stillfurther, but this relaxation was soon accompanied by a sharpdecline in procurement. For April it amounted to no more than246,000 metric tons, as compared with a monthly average of1,446,000 metric tons in the previous three months of 1928 andprocurement of 438,000 metric tons in April 1927.44

The Bolshevik Party leadership regarded this decline asexcessive. During the next two months the emergency mea-


sures were applied afresh, and more severely than before.They even affected the poor peasants (bednyaki) to an increas-ing extent. The Party tried to organize these bednyaki for astruggle against the kulaks, while at the same time requiringthat they surrender their own grain reserves, so as to set anexample—otherwise, sanctions would be applied to them aswell.

In the spring of 1928 the attempts to organize bednyaki andbatraki (agricultural laborers) came to nothing. At the begin-ning of the winter a section of the poor peasants and thelaborers had helped carry out requisitions from the kulaks, butthey had then been given an incentive to help in this task andto organize themselves: 25 percent of the produce confiscatedwas assigned to them. When spring came the situation wasdifferent: now, the procurement organizations were to cen-tralize all the grain, the better to achieve the targets they hadbeen given.

In this new situation it was observed that the influence ofthe kulaks over the other strata of the peasantry, far fromdiminishing, increased.45 From an immediate point of viewthat was narrowly economic and statistical, the results attainedby the application of the emergency measures could neverthe-less be regarded as “favorable.” The agricultural campaign(July 1, 1927, to June 30, 1928) terminated, indeed, with a totalprocurement that came close in amount to that of 1926–1927—10.38 million metric tons, as against 10.59 million—despite a markedly smaller harvest. This immediate “statisti-cal” result was of secondary importance, however. Much moreimportant were the middle- and long-term consequences ofthe procurement crisis and the application of the emergencymeasures.

Already in 1928 it became evident that these included seri-ous negative aspects, both economic and political: the wholeset of relations between town and country had been dis-turbed, and, above all, the worker-peasant alliance had beendamaged, since it had proved impossible to apply theemergency measures only to kulaks guilty of speculation.

A situation was being created in which it was getting harder


and harder for the Party to do without emergency measures.To be able to do without them the Party would have had toanalyze thoroughly the developments that were under way,including those connected with the form of the industrializa-tion process then being initiated. It would also have needed topossess political resources enabling it to restore relations oftrust with the peasantry, and the political and ideologicalresources necessary to work out and introduce a differentform of industrialization.46

But these conditions we not present. Far from renouncingthe emergency measures, the Party reverted to use of them in1928–1929. The negative consequences entailed by thesemeasures were repeated in aggravated form. This led to gravetension, both economic and political. In 1929 the tension wassuch that mere continuation of the emergency measureswould have brought matters to a dead end. A situation wasdeveloping that led to complete abandonment of the NEP, 47 tothe “great change” at the end of 1929. And that carried theSoviet formation into a new era full of violent contradictions.

During the 1930s there took place an accelerated indus-trialization, a rapid increase in the numbers of the proletariat,and the accession of many workers to positions of authorityand responsibility in the political, economic, and administra-tive spheres. At the same time, however, the consequences ofthe rupture of the worker-peasant alliance made themselvesfelt. This rupture resulted from a collectivization “fromabove” characterized by the fact that, except for a minority, theentry of the peasants into the kolkhoz system did not reflect anenthusiastic conversion to collective farming.

The rupture of the worker-peasant alliance weakened thedictatorship of the proletariat. It entailed a decline in proleta-rian democracy, with a strengthening of hierarchical relationsand an authoritarian style of leadership. It was accompaniedby a substantial fall in grain production and stockbreeding anda grave crisis in food supplies.


V. The process of abandonment of the NEP

The complete abandonment of the NEP did not reflect (asconcrete analysis shows) the carrying through of any precon-ceived “plan.” Nor did this abandonment take place in re-sponse to the “mere requirements of the development of theproductive forces” or to those of an “economic crisis.” If therewas indeed such a crisis, it was only the effect of a politicalcrisis, a crisis in class relations.

The turn that was made in 1929, a turn of immense histori-cal importance, resulted basically from an objective process ofclass struggles and contradictions that were not subjected tocontrol. A certain number of “decisions” taken by the Bol-shevik Party were features of this process, but were onlysubordinate factors in it. They were incapable of really direct-ing the course taken by the process, and their social andpolitical “effects” were, generally speaking, very differentfrom those that had been expected.

Only by clarifying the contradictions and conflicts whichform the driving force of this historical process can we under-stand its course and its characteristics, and draw lessons fromit. Such clarification calls for analysis of the economic andsocial relations that characterized the NEP, together with thesocial forces whose action brought about the transforming ofthese relations.

This analysis has been attempted in the pages that follow. Itdeals first with the general conditions of reproduction, andthen with the movement of the social contradictions that de-veloped in the countryside and in the towns. This movementwas, primarily, the result of the activity of the masses engagedin class struggle, but it was based upon the existing conditionsof production and reproduction. The direction that it took wasdetermined by the way that the different classes saw theirinterests and their role. The role played by the way classessaw themselves was particularly important in the case of theproletariat and its vanguard, the Bolshevik Party, and this iswhy space has been given to examination of the debates


within the Party and the Party’s decisions, and to analysis ofthe Bolshevik ideological formation and the changes itunderwent. Nevertheless, the outcome of these debates, thenature and consequences of the decisions taken by the Party,and the changes in its ideology cannot be explained if weconfine our analysis to developments taking place in thesuperstructure of the social formation. On the contrary, agenuine explanation requires that what happened in thesuperstructure be related to the general movement of the classstruggles and to the process of reproduction and transforma-tion of social relations as a whole.

The complexity of the relations and forces which have to bereckoned with is considerable, as is the complexity of theforms under which these relations and forces conditionedeach other and acted one upon another. The following analysisis therefore focused upon what seems essential. It aims only toilluminate the most important aspects of a historical processthe significance of which remains topical in the highest de-gree.

Notes

1. On the inauguration of the NEP, see volume I of the presentwork, pp. 477 ff.

2. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, p. 124.3. Lenin, CW, vol. 33, p. 304.4. The expression “economic policy” is equivocal, anyway: any

policy that affects the conditions of production and exchange alsoaffects class relations, and is therefore always an intervention inthe class struggle.

5. See pp. 484-496 of volume I of the present work.6. Lenin CW, vol. 29, p. 380.7. Ibid., vol. 29, p. 381.8. Ibid., vol. 33, p. 326 (my emphasis—C. B.).9. Ibid., vol. 33, p. 474.

10. The expression “get rid of the N.E.P.” was used by Stalin at theend of 1929, in his speech of December 27 to Marxists


specializing in agrarian problems. In this passage Stalin did notsay that the NEP had to be abandoned forthwith. He spoke of thisas happening in a future which he left indeterminate. Mean-while, he said, “We adhere to the N.E.P.,” explaining that this didnot imply any retreat and that “it serves the cause of socialism”(Stalin, Works, vol. 12, p. 178). In reality, as we shall see, themeasures taken during the winter of 1929–1930 signified aban-donment of the NEP.

11. Even in 1929–1930, when the NEP was being abandoned inpractice, this conception continued to be the one theoreticallyupheld by the Bolshevik Party. Hence the paradox that as late as1931, when nothing was left of the NEP, the Party was stillasserting that it had not been abandoned but was being pursued(see below, note 20, p. 480).

12. Figures calculated from E. Zaleski, Planning for EconomicGrowth in the Soviet Union, 1918–1932, p. 386. Zaleski’s figuresare drawn from various Soviet sources. They are, of course, onlyrather approximate estimates.

13. These figures are given in most of the statistical sources forthe period: see in particular, S. Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière etpaysanne en URSS (1921–1928): Le Problème du blé, pp. 113,346. In 1927–1928 the yield fell to 73.6 million metric tons (ibid.,p. 338).

14. Estimate by V. G. Groman, Entsiklopediya russkogo eksporta,vol. I, p. 175. The harvest of 1913 was estimated at 96.7 millionmetric tons by G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, in Desyat letkhozyaistvennogo stroitelstva SSSR 1917–1927, p. 34, quoted byGrosskopf, p. 113.

15. See Gosplan SSSR, Pyatiletny Plan, vol. I, p. 15. These indicesrelate to industry as a whole, and are calculated on the basis ofprewar prices.

16. In 1929, the apogee of the cycle of years preceding the greatbetween-the-wars crisis, the indices for production by manufac-turing industry were 142.7 in France, 117.3 in Germany, and100.3 in the United Kingdom (see Industrialisation and ForeignTrade, p. 134).

17. See S. N. Prokopovicz, Histoire économique de l’URSS, p. 282.18. Narodnoye khozyaistvo SSSR v 1961 g., pp. 7, 169.19. See Prokopovicz, Histoire économique, pp. 459-460, and B.

Kerblay, Les Marchés paysans en URSS, p. 112.20. See Narodnoye khozyaistvo 1958 g., p. 806.


21. Ibid., p. 814.22. Ibid., p. 851.23.24. These developments will be analyzed in this book.25. Narodnoye khozyaistvo 1958 g., p. 57.26.27. Lenin , CW, vol. 33, p. 275.28. Ibid., vol. 33, p. 277.29. See Kontrolnye tsifry na 1927–1928 gg., pp. 77–88.30. Sotsialisticheskoye Stroitelstvo SSSR (1935), pp. 552–553.31. See K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh i resheniyakh, vol. 2, p. 342.32. See A. Mendelson, ed., Pokazateli konyunkturi, p. 51.33. See Table 199 on p. 338 of Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière.34. Percentages calculated from the figures given in the work men-

tioned in note 32.35. On January 1, 1928, the rural procurement plan for 1927–1928

had been fulfilled only 39.3 percent, whereas on the same date ayear previously it had been fulfilled 63.7 percent. (See M. T.Chernov, “Opyt khlebozagotovok 1929–1930 g.,” inEkonomicheskoye Obozreniye, no. 1 [1930], p. 30, quoted in Gross-kopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 334).

36. During the winter of 1925–1926, when there had been a momen-tary decline in procurement despite a good harvest, the sameinterpretation tended to be given to this phenomenon: at thattime, however, it did not lead to the same measures as wereintroduced in 1927-1928, and the effects of the initial decline inprocurement were quickly overcome.

37. See K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 250–255.38. Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 336.39. Mikoyan in Pravda, February 10, 1928.40. Circular from the Krai Party office, North Caucasia, taken from

the Central Party Archives. See G. A. Konyukhov, KPSS v borbe skhlebnymi zatrudneniyami v strane (1928–1929), p. 152, quotedin M. Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power, p. 222.See Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p. 16.

42. Ibid., vol. 11, p. 19.43. See K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 372 ff.44. True, during the first quarter of 1926, procurement had brought in

only 841,000 metric tons (calculated from figures in the workquoted in note 31).

45. Already in February Mikoyan had spoken of “hesitation” on the

41.

Ibid., p. 880.

On “procurement,” see below, p. 91.


part of the bednyaki. A few months later it was being admittedthat many of them had even turned toward the kulaks (seeBauman’s article, “Uroki khlebozagotovok,” in Bolshevik, nos.3–14 [1928], p. 74).

46. Meaning a less centralized, less “modern” kind of industrializa-tion, calling for smaller financial resources and fewer imports,and relying to a greater extent on local resources and on theinitiative of the worker and peasant masses.

47. On this point, see below, p. 107.

49

Part 1The development of commodity and money relations and of planning in the

NEP period

Analyzing the phase of boom followed by crisis with whichthe NEP came to its end requires that we take into account, forthe whole of this period, the development of two types ofsocial relations: on the one hand, commodity and money rela-tions, and, on the other, the political relations resulting fromeconomic planning which modified the conditions of repro-duction of commodity and money relations.

The latter type of relations did not “disappear” during “warcommunism”: their fundamental condition for existence wasstill present, for social production had not ceased to be theresult of “mutually independent acts of labour, performed inisolation,” so that its products could “confront each other ascommodities,”1 despite all the “bans” issued against commod-ity exchange.

More generally, during “war communism” as during theNEP, the length of immediate labor time remained the deci-sive factor in the production of social wealth, social productionwas still based on value, and the increase of wealth dependedon surplus labor: the producer had therefore not yet appro-priated “his own general productive power,” as Marx put it inthe Grundrisse.2

Lenin recognized this reality when he called upon the Bol-shevik Party to adopt the NEP. What the Bolshevik Party did,in fact, between 1921 and 1923, was to recognize the existenceof commodity, money, and capitalist relations,3 and to createthe conditions for these relations to reproduce themselvesand, thereby, to reveal themselves clearly; for the transforma-


tion and destruction of these relations necessarily has to passthrough that phase.

Hence the putting into effect of a series of decisions, ofwhich the principal ones concerned the restoration of a lim-ited private sector in industry and trade,4 and, above all, aneffort aimed at reconstituting open commodity and moneyrelations.5 This made possible accounting in money terms,and required the presence of a currency that should be asstable as possible.

At the same time, the Bolshevik Party was concerned to helpbirth the political, ideological, and economic conditions forthe transformation and then the eventual disappearance ofthese same commodity, money, and capitalist relations. A pre-liminary stage in this direction was the establishment of aplanning apparatus which should function so as to subject thereproduction of commodity and money relations to condi-tions and political relations imposed by the organs of thedictatorship of the proletariat.

Notes

1. Marx, Capital (London), vol. I, p. 132. This point has already beenmade in volume I of the present work, p. 462.

2. Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie, p. 705. Inthis passage Marx shows that the transformation of the system ofthe productive forces which begins with the automatizing of pro-duction brings about a “monstrous disproportion between thelabour time applied and its product,” and also a “qualitative im-balance between labour, reduced to a pure abstraction, and thepower of the production-process it superintends,” with the humanbeing coming to

relate more as watchman and regulator to the production-process itself. . . . He steps to the side of the production-process instead of being its chief actor. . . . In this trans-formation, it is neither the direct human labour he himselfperforms, nor the time during which he works, but rather theappropriation of his own general productive power, his


understanding of nature and his mastery over it by virtue ofhis presence as a social body—it is, in a word, the develop-ment of the social individual which appears as the greatfoundation-stone of production and of wealth. And when thisis so, “as soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to bethe great wellspring of wealth, labour-time ceases and mustcease to be its measure,” which puts an end to the roleplayed by exchange value and surplus labor.

We must obviously guard against a “technicist” interpretation ofthe latter must come to an end, he does not say that this role willcome to an end by itself. An essential factor in the process oftransformation expounded by Marx is man’s understanding ofnature and mastery over it “as a social body,” and this under-standing and mastery proceed by way of a political and ideologi-cal revolution which dictates a different relation between menand their labor, a relation that sees this labor as what it is, namely,directly social labor. Hence the importance, when the workershave taken political power, of the development of Communistlabor, which is one of the modes of transformation of the forms ofappropriation and distribution (see Lenin’s remarks on this point,quoted in volume I of the present work, pp. 198–202.

3. See on this point Lenin, CW, vol. 33, pp. 97, 312, and volume I ofthe present work, pp. 500, 508.

4. The private sector of industry and trade which operated at thebeginning of the NEP included both individual craft and tradingenterprises and capitalist ones. During “war communism,” thoughthe activity of all kinds of craftsmen had not been formally prohib-ited, it had often been paralyzed through lack of raw materials andmeans of transport. With the improvement in the general eco-nomic situation resulting from the adoption of the NEP, craftactivity was resumed. The revival of the rural crafts played a bigrole in the development of agricultural production.

As regards private capitalist enterprises, and those craft enter-prises whose activity had been formally suspended, legal mea-sures were taken in the summer and autumn of 1921 with a view toenabling them to expand their production to a certain extent. Adecree of July 7, 1921, authorized “free exercise” of craft occupa-tions and the carrying on of small enterprises employing no morethan twenty workers, in the case of those without mechanicalpower, or ten workers if they used mechanical power. A decree ofDecember 10, 1921, restored to their former owners some of the


small businesses which had been nationalized but were not actu-ally operating. A decree of May 22, 1922, enlarged the right to setup private commercial and industrial enterprises. This right wasgranted to any person, whether acting alone or in association, as acompany or a cooperative, “so as to develop the productive forces”(Article 4)—on condition that the right was not “used in a waycontrary to the economic and social aim assigned to it” (Article 1).Besides this, it was provided from the start of the NEP that certainstate-owned enterprises could be leased out to private capitalists,or granted as concessions to foreign capital if it seemed that theirproduction might thereby be increased more quickly. (See E. H.Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 2, pp. 299 ff., and Pro-kopovicz, Histoire économique, pp. 274 ff.)

During the first years of the NEP (broadly speaking, until theFourteenth Party Congress, in December 1925), the predominantidea was that private enterprises were bound to disappear eventu-ally, “by themselves,” that is, through competition by state-ownedenterprises which, once they were well organized, would providegoods at lower prices than the private ones.

At the beginning of 1925 an extension of possibilities of de-velopment for private industry was still regarded as acceptable. InMay a decree gave official permission, under certain conditions, tothe private sector to employ as many as 100 wage earners perenterprise, while the leased enterprises could employ severalhundred: an example is the Moscow factory called “ProletarianLabor,” a private firm producing metal goods and employingover 650 persons in October 1925. (See Y. S. Rozenfeld, Pro-myshlennaya Politika SSSR, p. 494, and the supplement toPlanovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 12 [1925], p. 7, quoted by E. H. Carr,Socialism in One Country, vol. 1, p. 359.)

As will be seen, the economic role of the private capitalist sectorin industry remained on the whole fairly limited, but the situationwas different where trade, especially retail trade, and the craftswere concerned (see below, pp. 187 ff.).

5. This effort applied also to the production units of the state sector,where, as we shall see, “business accounting” or “financial au-tonomy” (khozraschet) was introduced (see below, pp. 268 ff.).

53

1. The reconstitution of a monetary andfinancial system

Under “war communism” the currency played only a rela-tively secondary role.1 A large proportion of those productswhich were not consumed by their producers were in thatperiod directly allocated to particular uses by the politicalauthority. This applied to what was produced by the factoriesand also to that part of the production of the individual peasantfarms which was requisitioned. However, much buying andselling went on clandestinely, either by way of barter or byexchanging goods for monetary tokens. The state itself did notstop issuing new notes, though their purchasing power felllower and lower with every passing month.

When the civil war and intervention ended, the constraintsof “war communism” were no longer accepted by the peasantmasses. They demanded the cessation of requisitioning, estab-lishment of a stable fiscal system, freedom of trade, and thereintroduction of exchange by means of money, which corre-sponded to the form of production then prevailing in agricul-ture. Acceptance of these demands by the Soviet governmentwas one of the principal aspects of the NEP.

Initially (at the beginning of 1921), requisitioning was re-placed by a tax-in-kind, the amount of which was fixed inadvance (unlike the amount requisitioned), so that the morethe peasants produced the more produce they had at theirdisposal. The total revenue from this tax-in-kind was to besuch that it would meet the needs of the army and the cost ofpart of the state machine. As for the agricultural productsneeded by industry and for foreign trade, they were to besupplied in the main through exchanges of products betweenthe peasants and the state institutions. At the beginning of theNEP the favored form of these exchanges was still barter, and


only that part of the peasants’ production which was not eitherconsumed by themselves or absorbed by the tax or by “prod-ucts exchange” with state institutions could be sold freely bythem in their local markets.

It very soon became apparent that the barter transactionsbetween the state organs and the peasants were not goingwell. In October 1921 the former were given permission tobuy agricultural produce, that is, to pay for it with money. Atthe same time the Soviet government increased its cash re-ceipts by introducing new taxes which were also payable inmoney. Finally, in 1923, the agricultural tax was itself changedfrom a tax-in-kind to a money tax.2 Thenceforth, commodityand money relations formed the essential link between ag-riculture and the state, between agriculture and industry, andbetween the different units of industrial production, evenwhen these belonged to the state.

The process of reconstituting commodity production thusentailed a parallel process of reconstituting the circulation ofmoney, for, as Marx said, money comes into being “spontane-ously in the course of exchange.”3 So long as social productiontakes place in a private form, the social nature of the wealthproduced tends to be incarnated in money.4

I. The process of reconstituting the Sovietmonetary system

A study of the process whereby the Soviet monetary systemwas reconstituted is highly instructive. It reveals the subordi-nation of this process to the prevailing social conditions as awhole and to the various forms assumed by the class struggle.It also enables us to perceive the contradictions that governedsubsequent changes in the monetary system. Only the mostimportant facts will be mentioned here.

When the NEP began, the monetary tokens in circulationwere issued directly by the state, by the Narkomfin (Commis-sariat of Finance). The illusions of “war communism” re-


quired that they be called not “currency notes” but “settle-ment notes.” These notes, for which the everyday name was“sovznak,” were issued in large quantities (inflation beingregarded by some as a means of “doing away with” money). In1921 it became clear that the sovznaks, whose purchasingpower was rapidly sinking, could not fulfill functions whichmust from now on be those of a currency.

On November 3, 1921, the Soviet government decided tosubstitute new notes for the old ones—the new notes to beregarded as “currency notes” and no longer as “settlementnotes.” The existence of a currency was thus officially ac-knowledged, though Soviet citizens went on talking in termsof svoznaks.

For lack of sufficient budgetary receipts the state continuedto issue large quantities of notes (in 1922 60 percent ofbudgetary receipts was due to the issue of new notes) and thepurchasing power of the new rouble fell so sharply that inMarch 1922, 200,000 new roubles were needed to pay for (onthe average) what had cost only 60,000 in October 1921 (andwhich corresponded roughly to one prewar rouble).5

The budget for 1921–1922 was then drawn up in terms ofthe “goods-rouble,” a unit of account which was supposed torepresent a fixed amount of purchasing power (as comparedwith prewar prices). Each month the Narkomfin calculated thepurchasing power of the currency in circulation in relation tothe goods-rouble. The number of monetary units that adebtor had to pay (e.g., the wages due from enterprises to theirworkers) was revalued in accordance with the depreciation ofthe currency thus recorded (for the wage earners this measuresignified the establishment of a sliding scale of wages).

The development of payments in money by state enterprisesmeant that the latter had to be provided with the monetaryresources that they needed for their operations. To this end, aresolution of the VTsIK, dated October 12, 1921, decided thatthe state bank (Gosbank), which had closed in January 1920,should be reopened.6 The new state bank began functioningon November 16, 1921.7 It operated on the basis of khozras-chet, i.e., financial autonomy,8 and therefore had to cover its


expenditure by its receipts. Its capital was provided by thestate and its chairman appointed by Narkomfin. The bank’sresources were at first slight: 200 milliard roubles of thatperiod. It could grant only very short-term loans, and those athigh rates of interest (between 8 and 12 percent a month).

The pace at which the currency continued to depreciate ledthe Gosbank’s experts (among whom there were a number offormer bankers, financiers, and industrialists) to prepare areport in which they set out proposals in conformity with thecanons of “financial orthodoxy.” This report called for exten-sion of “free markets,” priority financial aid to light industry(the branch best capable of bringing about a rapid develop-ment of internal trade), review of the conditions governing theway that the foreign trade monopoly worked, an attempt toobtain loans from abroad, and a return to the gold standard. Ifthese proposals had been adopted, the Soviet economy wouldsoon have been reintegrated into world economy, occupying asubordinate position as producer of certain raw materials andagricultural products.9

These proposals were rejected by the Eleventh Conferenceof the Bolshevik Party (December 1921), which, however,emphasized the need, in order to strengthen the worker-peasant alliance, to develop exchanges between agricultureand industry by means of a stable currency. The conference’sresolution on the reestablishment of the national economystated that it was necessary to undertake “the restoration of acurrency based on gold” and that “the first step to be taken inthis direction is the firm implementation of a plan aimed atlimiting the issue of paper-money.”10

In March 1922 calculation in goods-roubles11 was givenup. Thereafter, the state’s receipts and expenditures were cal-culated in gold roubles. The actual payments were, of course,made in paper money, but the quantity of paper money corre-sponding to a certain sum in gold roubles was evaluated byreference to the rate at which Gosbank bought gold on themarket.12

In fact, although it fell relatively in 1922, the budget deficitfinanced by currency issues continued to be considerable, and


the decline in the purchasing power of the old currency wenton until this currency was withdrawn in 1924. A new monetaryunit was then made legal tender, with a gold backing, andissued from the beginning of 1923 by Gosbank: namely, thechervonets rouble.

The chervonets rouble enjoyed great stability for severalyears. Soviet Russia was at that time the first country inEurope which, after taking part in the First World War, hadsucceeded in restoring a relatively stable currency, anachievement that was obviously not due to merely technicalreasons.

II. The currency reform

The chervonets (which corresponded to ten gold roubles, or7.7423 grams of refined gold) circulated at first alongside theold paper rouble, which continued to depreciate quickly. Ac-tually, the chervonets became the principal medium of pay-ment. In January 1924 the Thirteenth Conference of the Bol-shevik Party noted that four-fifths of the currency in circula-tion consisted of chervonets roubles.13

The situation had become ripe for the currency reform,which was decided on by a decree dated February 4, 1924—two weeks after Lenin’s death.

(a) The decree of February 1924

By virtue of this decree, Gosbank had supreme control overthe issue of the currency that was thenceforth to be legaltender and which was secured on the gold held by Gosbank.The former sovznaks were withdrawn from circulation at therate of 50,000 sovznaks of 1923 for one new gold rouble. The statetreasury, which had up to then issued notes to cover thebudget deficit, lost this right of issue and could thenceforthput out only small denominations, to an amount not exceedingone-half of the chervonets issue of Gosbank.14


In 1924 the new currency enjoyed the confidence of thepeasants, at least so far as current transactions were con-cerned. However, the loans which the Soviet government triedto raise in the rural areas met with only limited success.15

(b) The class consequences of themonetary system established in1924

From the standpoint of class relations and the effects of theclass struggle upon the political line of the Bolshevik Party,one of the essential aspects of the monetary reform of 1924 wasthe effective linking of the new currency with gold.

This linkage meant that Gosbank had to intervene in themarket to maintain the rouble’s rate in relation to gold and toforeign exchange at the official parity, which entailed anumber of consequences.

Thus, Gosbank needed to possess reserves of gold andforeign exchange sufficient to be able to act effectively uponthe market. This dictated an export policy aimed at keepingthese reserves at an adequate level and tended to strengthenthe position of the rich peasants, who were regarded as thosebest able to produce grain for export. On the other hand,efforts at industrialization had to be relatively restricted, in sofar as industrial development was not capable of quickly sup-plying exportable goods, but, on the contrary, necessitatedimports of equipment. The interests of the rich peasants thustended to be favored more than those of the peasantry ingeneral and those of industry and the working class. On aninternational level, the Soviet Union tended to settle down inthe role of a country supplying agricultural products.

Maintaining the exchange rate of the rouble at official parityin relation to gold and foreign currencies also dictated a re-strictive policy where credit and budgetary expenditure wereconcerned. Consequently, financial and credit policies couldnot be adapted first and foremost to the internal needs of theeconomy as these had been defined politically by the Bol-


shevik Party. Economic, financial, and budgetary policy was tosome extent subject to the pressure of the world market, asexercised through the “demands” of the functioning of thegold standard.

The currency reform of 1924 corresponded to a politicalorientation which was that of the bourgeois “experts” of Gos-bank and Narkomfin. The Bolshevik leaders clearly did no grasp the full implication of this political orientation. Some ofthem even thought it possible to rejoice in the integration ofthe Soviet Union into the European market. This was the casewith Sokolnikov, then commissar of finance, who said: “Asmembers of the European community, despite the specialfeatures of our political position and although a different classis in power here, we have become integrated into the Euro-pean mechanism of economic and financial development.”16

(c) The subsequent changes in themonetary system

From 1925 on the concrete meaning of the currency reformdecided on in the previous year began to become apparent.Gosbank was now obliged to throw significant quantities ofgold and foreign currency onto the market in order to keep theexchange stable.17 This situation was due to the developmentof increasing contradictions between the “demands” of thefunctioning of the gold standard and those of a rapid develop-ment of industrial production.

At the beginning of 1925 the CC of the Bolshevik Party didin fact take measures aimed at depriving Gosbank and Nark-komfin of supreme control over budgetary policy. For thispurpose a commission for the USSR budget was set up, underthe chairmanship of Kuibyshev,18 which upheld a policy ofbudgetary and credit expansion directed toward activating thedevelopment of industry.

Implementation of this policy soon became incompatiblewith “support” for the rate of exchange of the rouble. In March1926 it was decided that Gosbank must stop selling gold and


foreign currency in order to keep the rouble at par.19 Withoutsaying so, the government thus broke with the currency re-form of 1924 which had, in practice, tied the rouble to gold.

In July 1926 the export of Soviet currency was forbidden,and in March 1928 its import as well. Thereafter, the roublewas a purely internal currency with a rate of exchange fixed bya government commission. The few financial centers which, in1924, had begun to quote the chervonets rouble now ceased todo so.20

The rouble functioned as authentic paper money. It was stillthe embodiment of the social nature of the wealth produced. Itwas not a “labour voucher” such as Marx had said might existduring the first phase of communism—for what is characteris-tic of such vouchers is that “they do not circulate.” Later on,this currency was to go on functioning under conditions thatremained basically the same as during the NEP, which meantthat fully socialized production still had not come into being.21

(d) The political implications of theabandonment of the gold standard andthe return to a paper currency

The abandonment of a currency secured on gold and thereturn to a paper currency had important political conse-quences. It meant that financial and credit policy, and alsoimport and export policy, were no longer as directly subject topressure of the international markets as they had been before.It was now possible to tackle more actively the problem offinancing industrialization.

Moreover, abandonment of the gold standard made the sta-bility of the currency depend essentially on the way relationsbetween the political authority and the different social classesevolved. Actually, this stability was not dependent merely on“technical measures” (that is, on adjustment of the quantity ofmoney and its speed of circulation to the requirements ofproduction and distribution), but also on a political andideological relation between those who held the currency and


the political authority that issued it. This relation took theform of “confidence in the currency.” As we know, the mone-tary role performed by a token of value can be maintained“only if its function as a symbol is guaranteed by the generalintention of commodity owners.” In the case of paper money,this “general intention” acquires its “legal conventional exis-tence” in the establishment of a “legal rate of exchange.”22

The existence of a “legal rate of exchange” does not sufficein the least to guarantee the stability of the currency; in orderthat this stability not be challenged, it is necessary that the“general intention” of those who hold currency and com-modities be maintained. In a class-divided society this “inten-tion” can be preserved only if the class which is in powerfirmly carries out its leading role. When its performance of thisrole flags, the “legal rate of exchange” cannot save the cur-rency from depreciating, nor, in certain circumstance, can itprevent the emergence of exchanges effected by means otherthan legal tender.

It was precisely the conjunction, toward the end of the NEPperiod, of economic and monetary measures that lackedcoherence, together with the sharpening of class contradic-tions (especially in the sphere of relations between the Sovietgovernment and the peasantry) that upset the working of themonetary system. The leadership of the Bolshevik Party didnot expect this to happen. They thought that the economic andpolitical conditions obtaining in the Soviet Union constituteda lasting and powerful “guarantee” of the stability of the cur-rency; this was not really the case, as was shown particularlyby the evolution of prices and exchanges.23

The Bolshevik Party’s illusions regarding the capacity of theSoviet government, under the conditions of the NEP, to con-trol production, exchange, and prices by means of economicand administrative measures reflected an underestimation ofthe economic and social contradictions and of the decisive roleof the ideological and political class struggle. From 1928 on,reality came into harsh conflict with these illusions—whichnevertheless were destined to reproduce themselves in newforms.


III. The budgetary system

The restoration of a basically balanced budgetary system con-stitutes another important aspect of the economic reestab-lishment process of the first years of the NEP. There was amaterial basis for the restoration, namely, the remarkable boomin industrial and agricultural production. There was a politicalbasis, too, namely the confidence of the worker and peasantmasses in the Soviet government. This confidence was ex-pressed in the way the agricultural tax was paid—with a mini-mum of coercion. (In any case, at the beginning of the NEP,the administration was hardly represented in the rural areas.)

The restoration of the budgetary system also had an eco-nomic and juridical basis, namely, the consolidation of thehuge state-owned sector of industry and commerce, whichfurnished no small proportion of the budget’s receipts. Thebudget was balanced in 1923–1924,24 and this was an essentialfactor in the stabilization of the currency. In 1924–1925 therewas a budget surplus, and this happened in the followingyears as well, during which time budgetary receipts and ex-penditure increased very rapidly.25 In 1924–1925 the eco-nomic boom was such that the forecasts of budgetary receiptsand expenditure were revised upward several times. Therapid expansion of budgetary receipts continued, attaining in1927–1928 the figure of over 4.58 milliard roubles (not includ-ing revenue from the transport and postal services), comparedwith expenditure of 4.38 milliard. This was 75 percent morethan the figure for receipts in 1925–1926.26 In the same period,budget expenditure on industry and electrification increasedeven faster, by 173 percent. 27 These sums represented,moreover, only a fraction of the total amount of capital invest-ment in the two sectors mentioned, which in 1927–1928 cameto nearly two milliard roubles.28

IV. The banking system

The rapid recovery in industrial and agricultural produc-tion, the development of commercial exchanges, the equally


rapid expansion of the budget and of investment were accom-panied by restoration of a banking system. This served to tapand redistribute monetary resources, ensure the availability offunds for enterprises, grant them credits, and manage a sub-stantial share of the investment fund.

(a) The establishment of a new bankingsystem

The banking system thus set up (which was to continue anddevelop its activity even when the NEP had been replaced bythe policy of Five-Year Plans) embraced, besides Gosbank,which was responsible for issuing currency and looking afterthe current bank accounts of the state enterprises, also a seriesof specialized banks: Prombank (the bank for industry), Elekt-robank (the bank in charge of financing electrification),Tsekombank (the bank which financed municipal enter-prises), and the Agricultural Bank. The network of creditcooperatives and the savings bank completed the system. Itwas closely linked with the services of the Commissariat ofFinance. It constituted a vast state apparatus employingthousands of functionaries and experts, who were usually ofbourgeois or petty-bourgeois origin. The weight and influenceof these experts made themselves felt more than once duringthe NEP period: this was an aspect of the class struggle thatthe Bolshevik Party was especially ill-prepared to deal with.29

While budgetary policy was strict, that was not always trueof policy relating to credit and the issuing of currency. Thus,there was a rapid expansion in the amount of money in circula-tion, mainly connected with the size of the bank credits madeavailable to the economy. Part of these credits corresponded toincreased economic activity and therefore covered a real needfor circulating funds; but another part, especially after 1925,served to cover investments that would be productive only inthe middle or long term. The funds paid out increased theamount of money in circulation and incomes, and ended byexerting inflationary pressure. This situation developed con-tradictions that were to be felt with particular acuteness fromthe autumn of 1927 on.30


(b) The illusions connected with thefunctioning of the banking system

To the illusions engendered by the restoration of a monetarysystem whose functioning was supposed to be completelycontrollable by the state, there were soon added similar illu-sions connected with the existence of a powerful bankingsystem which was supposed to play a central role in directingthe country’s economic development.

During the first years of the NEP, the banking system wasessentially conceived as serving to exercise more effectivecontrol over the allocation of credit. Thus, a resolutionadopted by the CC at the end of April 1924 declared: “It isindispensable to organise a committee of banks, whose taskshould be the organisation of bank credit and the avoidance ofduplication, the preliminary examination of directive plans ofcredit, the fixing of co-ordinated discount rates, and the ap-propriate distribution of banking facilities among differentregions and branches of industry.” 31

The committee of banks advocated in this resolution wasformed in June 1924. It included representatives of the prin-cipal Soviet banks of the period.32 Gosplan also participated inthis committee, which was responsible for drawing up creditplans for submission for the government’s approval. In a fewyears the banking network included thousands of branchesand managed milliards of roubles of credit.

The idea then took shape that credit plans would make itpossible to draw up real economic plans. Krzhizhanovsky, thechairman of Gosplan, said at the beginning of 1925 that “creditand planning are blood-brothers in a single system of sociali-sation.” As for Kamenev, he hailed the “new commandingheight” of the economy, in which he saw a “decisive factor inthe regulation of the economy.” 33

Such formulations as these could seem correct so long as thestructure of production had undergone no profound changes.They became sources of grave illusions as soon as the size ofinvestments made it necessary to pay special attention to liq-uid assets and to the use made of different categories of prod-


ucts. In 1927, however, the CC considered that the existenceof a state banking system linked with state-owned industry(which supplied the bulk of industrial production) and with apowerful state and cooperative commercial network madepossible genuine economic planning.

These illusions found expression in a resolution adopted bythe plenum of the CC held on February 7–12, 1927, after itheard a report presented jointly by Mikoyan and Kuibyshev.This resolution declared that the conditions had now beencreated for solving the problems of developing industry andagriculture, increasing accumulation and real wages, steadilystrengthening the socialist elements in the national economy,and restricting the role played by private capitalists. The reso-lution stressed the idea that the solution of all these questionsrevolved around the problem of prices. Thus, the problem ofprices appeared as the essential factor in the consolidation ofthe worker-peasant alliance,34 while the other aspects of theclass struggle were overlooked.

In the February 1927 issue of the Party’s official journal,Bolshevik, Mikoyan set out the thesis that a new stage of theNEP had been reached: according to him it was no longer themarket but the “organised sector” that played the decisiverole in determining prices.35

In May 1927 the same journal expressed the view that “thealleged contradiction between industry and agriculture” hadceased to matter.36 These claims were carried farther in anarticle published in a journal specially concerned with ag-ricultural and peasant questions, which asserted that “theSoviet state has brought the grain market under control to thepoint where no untoward event or mistake in calculation canhenceforth threaten our plans for construction.” 37

To an increasing extent the Party’s thinking was thus domi-nated by the illusion that the system which had been estab-lished since 1924 would make possible control of the mostcomplex economic developments, including those that weredirectly connected with class contradictions. This illusion wasall the more remarkable in that its claim to control wasfounded upon the working of those economic apparatuses


which were farthest separated from the masses. The masseswere kept in ignorance, moreover, even of measures that af-fected them as directly as the prices fixed by the state. Theseprices were told only to the administrative and commercialorgans and to the merchants; they were not made public.

At the end of 1927 this illusion regarding the possibility ofcontrolling the development of the economy—and even thecontradictions between classes—through proper functioningof the administrative and banking system suffered its firstblow with the outbreak of the crisis in the state’s procurementof grain.38 The secrecy surrounding decisions directly affect-ing the masses was then denounced as a hindrance to theexercise of “pressure of organised public opinion in the formof Party Soviet, trade-union and other organizations, and in thepress.” 39 However, these criticisms of the “excessive se-crecy” surrounding the economic and administrative machin-ery did not put an end either to this secrecy or to the illusionsheld regarding the powers possessed by this machinery ofstate.

Actually, these illusions reflected a conception which hadmatured between 1924 and 1927 and become deeply rooted inthe Party. This conception ascribed a decisive role to theactivity of the state’s economic organs and emphasized in aone-sided way a development of industry based mainly uponinvestments directly controlled by these organs. It was a con-ception radically alien to the formulations put forward byLenin in his last writings, especially in those reviewing thelessons of the first five years of Soviet power.

As we know, Lenin saw the NEP as a road which could leadto socialism provided that the Party put in the forefront theideological and political class struggle and thereby correctlyresolved the contradictions.40 In order to do that, the Partymust help the working masses to transform economic rela-tions through becoming aware of the demands of socialismand developing economic and political practices that wouldenable them to build collective forms of production and dis-tribution and to exercise a more thorough and effective con-trol over the state apparatuses for which the mass organiza-tions must eventually substitute themselves.


The conception of the NEP which became increasingly es-tablished from 1925 on was in contradiction with this view. Itassumed, in effect, that the NEP could lead to socialismmainly through “good management” of the economy by theeconomic and administrative apparatuses (possibly subject, ifnecessary, to a certain amount of “pressure” from below).Here were a set of illusions constituting an aspect of what R.Linhart has called “an ideal N.E.P.”41

These illusions, which were connected with practices in-creasingly remote from the requirements of the NEP, and, inthe first place, of the worker-peasant alliance, resulted fromthe class struggle, from shifts of dominance within the Bol-shevik ideological formation,42 and were reinforced by thevery nature of the economic relations that prevailed at thattime. These relations, which were essentially commodity,money, and capitalist relations, determined the forms inwhich the real relations were concealed and inverted, thoseforms which Marx analyzed in Capital.43

The illusions which thus took shape were reinforced by theway the Soviet economy operated at that time—presumingformal subordination of the state-owned enterprises to thepolitical authority, whereas in fact this subordination wasextremely limited, precisely because of the slight extent towhich the masses controlled the working of the economy. Allthis made economic reality particularly “opaque.”44

The existence of the illusions just described was to renderstill more “unexpected” the outbreak of the crisis that beganin 1928, accounting for the sudden political turn made in 1929and the lack of real preparation for the changes then intro-duced.

V. The weak degree of control of themonetary and financial system

Until the beginning of 1925 the Bolshevik Party’s control ofthe monetary and banking system was relatively weak. Theintegration of the rouble into the European financial system45


imposed a number of constraints upon monetary policy andalso on credit, investment, and foreign trade policies.

The abandonment of the gold standard removed these con-straints from without to a fairly large extent, but they werereplaced by others. Among these was the need to strengthenthe confidence of the masses in the Soviet currency, a con-fidence that depended especially on the results of thefunctioning of the Soviet economy for the working people.

In this sphere the changes that took place in the Bolshevikideological formation, and the practices connected with thesechanges, played a very negative role.

Down to 1925 relative priority had been given to satisfyingthe needs of the masses, including the peasants, and thisensured a more or less regular supply of goods for the popula-tion and comparatively stable retail prices.

Between January 1, 1924, and January 1, 1925, the priceindex maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed arise that was relatively slight, given the conditions of the time:about 8 percent. In the following year the rise recorded wasonly 6.6 percent.46 Between January 1, 1926, and January 1,1928, the retail price index even fell a little (by 5.8 percentover the two years) as the rise in retail prices in the privatesector (6.8 percent) was offset by their fall in the state andcooperative sector (8 percent).47

And yet, from July 1927 on, price control slackened. On theone hand, some of the stores were no longer regularlysupplied with goods (this was especially the case with thestores situated in country districts, which found themselvesreceiving fewer and fewer industrial goods), and there oc-curred what was called a “goods famine,” so that the pricesquoted for goods which could not actually be bought weremeaningless. On the other hand, and as a consequence of thisdevelopment, retail prices in private trade began to rise. If thelevel in July 1927 may be taken as 100, these prices stood at115.3 in July 1928 and at 150.7 in July 1929.48 The rise in priceparticularly affected agricultural products of general consump-tion: thus, between 1926–1927 and 1928–1929, market pricesincreased by 220 percent for rye, 222 percent for potatoes, 68


percent for milk, etc.49 In this sphere, too, frequent shortagesadded to the difficulties encountered by consumers.

After the middle of 1927 the monetary system and the pricesystem were less and less under control. In the last analysis,this loss of control corresponded to a slackening in control ofthe development of the class struggle. The loss of control (theforms of which will be analyzed in the following chapters) wasexpressed especially in an increase of money incomes withoutany adequate counterpart in increased production of con-sumer goods, so that there was a rapid increase in the fiduciarycirculation, which rose from 1,668 million on January 1, 1928,to 2,773 million on January 1, 1930, an increase of 66 per-cent.50

The rising prices, the decline in the supply of goods to thepopulation—especially the peasant masses—the reappearanceof inflation, etc., showed that practices were developing whichimplied de facto abandonment of the NEP and the con-tinuance eventually resulted in its complete abandonment.Among these practices was a policy of accumulation and allo-cation of investments which led to lasting imbalances thatbore more and more heavily on the peasantry. A new politicalline was gradually establishing itself and becoming embodiedin the economic plans then being drawn up. We must nowconsider the planning organs which were concerned in this,but without forgetting that the content of the plans was, ulti-mately, the result of a policy, an effect of the class struggles.

Notes

1. See volume I of the present book, pp. 388, 461.2. See M. Dobb, Soviet Economic Development since 1917, pp.

125–139.3. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 49.4. See on this point Marx, Capital (Moscow), vol. III, p. 560.5. See E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 2, p. 348.6. Ibid., pp. 346–347.7. This was the Gosbank of the RSFSR; two years later it became


the Gosbank of the USSR (see Sobranie Uzakonenii, no. 81[1923], art. 786).

8. See below, pp. 268 ff.9. See Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 2, p. 350.

10. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, p. 589.11. See above, p. 55.12. See Sobranie Uzakonenii, no. 26 (1922), art. 310; and no. 31, art.

377; see also Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 2, p. 355.13. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, p. 795.14. See Sobranie Uzakonenii, no. 32 (1924), art. 288; no. 34, art. 308;

no. 45 art. 433; E. H. Carr, The Interregnum, p. 133, andSocialism, vol. I, pp. 475–476.

15. The checking of inflation made it possible to reduce interest ratesto a substantial degree. The rate for long-term loans granted topeasants was, in 1924, 8 percent per year, and this fell to 6percent in 1925. The loans raised by the state bore interest at 5 or6 percent. The subscribers to these were mainly rich or well-to-do peasants (see Carr, Socialism, vol. I, pp. 469-474).

16. Sotsialisticheskoye Khozyaistvo, no. 5 (1924), p. 6.17. See Carr, Socialism, vol. I, p. 481.18. See V. Dyachenko, Sovetskie finansy v pervoy faze razvitiya

sovetskogo gosudarstva, vol. 1, p. 426; Sobranie Zakonov, no. 17(1925), arts. 127, 128; no. 38, art. 282; no. 71, art. 520.

19. See Carr, Socialism, vol. 1, p. 487.20. See A. Baykov, The Soviet Economic System, pp. 102–103.21. In volume II of Capital Marx imagines a society in which pro-

duction has been “socialised,” and writes that, this being so,

society distributes labour-power and means of production tothe different branches of production. The producers may, forall it matters, receive paper vouchers entitling them to with-draw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantitycorresponding to their labour-time. These vouchers are notmoney. They do not circulate.” (Capital [Moscow], vol. II,p. 358.)

It will be observed that the “socialisation” mentioned heregoes far beyond mere ownership by the state. It implies athoroughgoing transformation of the ideological and political re-lations, enabling the producers associated on the scale of societyto subject production to a plan which is genuinely the result oftheir joint activity (and not that of an administrative instance


separated from them and imposing upon them tasks which it hasitself determined).

22. Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 116.23. See for example, above, pp. 67 ff. and below pp. 150 ff.24. Until 1930 the financial year ran from October 1 to September 30.

Thereafter, the financial year and the ordinary year coincided.25. On these questions see Carr, Socialism, vol. I, pp. 456 ff., and

E. H. Carr and R. W. Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy(1926–1929), vol. I, pt. 2, pp. 974–975.

26. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol . I, pt. 2, p. 975.27. See Baykov, The Soviet Economic System, p. 95.28. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 979.29. It must be stressed that, if experts of bourgeois origin were able

to influence the running of the monetary and banking system,this was because they were integrated into structures whichmade possible the reproduction of the relations and practices ofwhich they were the “carriers.” Subsequently, the presence of“specialists” of proletarian origin in the financial and monetaryorgans was not to prevent the continued reproduction ofbourgeois relations and practices, for the political line beingapplied had not radically transformed the structure of these or-gans.

30. Between January 1, 1924 and January 1, 1928, the total amount ofmoney in circulation increased fivefold, growing from 322 to1,668 million roubles (Baykov, The Soviet Economic System, p.104). Between 1925–1926 and 1927–1928 the amount of moneyin circulation increased by about 42 percent, whereas the na-tional income, in constant prices, increased by only about 14percent (Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, part 2, pp. 976,977). This contributed to the increase in prices which will bedescribed at the end of the chapter.

31. Quoted from Carr, Socialism, vol. I, p. 473.32. See A. Z. Arnold Banks, Credit and Money in Soviet Russia, pp.

266, 284–285.33. Planovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 1 (1925), pp. 19, 30–31.34. See K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 224–227, especially p.

225.35. Bolshevik, February 15, 1927, pp. 18–27.36. Ibid., May 1, 1927, p. 9.37. Bednota, May 13, 1927.38. See above, pp. 37 ff.


39. Voprosy Torgovli, nos. 2–3 (November-December 1927), p. 67,quoted in Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 679, n. 2.

40. See volume I of the present work.41. R. Linhart, “La NEP, quelques caractéristiques de la transition

soviétique,” in Etudes de planification socialiste, pp. 156 ff.,especially pp. 185–186.

42. See Part 4 of the present volume.43. Marx, Capital (London), vol. I, pp. 165, 180. See also C. Bet-

telheim, Economic Calculation and Forms of Property (London),pp. 51–57.

44. See also, on this point, R Linhart’s remarks in “La NEP,” pp.195–196. We shall see later that, in the sphere of industry, “pro-duction conferences” were supposed to ensure a better aware-ness of reality, but the actual conditions in which these confer-ences were held seriously restricted their practical effect.

45. See above, pp. 57–59.46. Figures calculated from Baykov, The Soviet Economic System, p.

96.47. Figures calculated from A. Mendelson, ed., Pokazateli

konyunktury, quoted in Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt.2, pp. 964–965.

48. Ibid. In the case of agricultural products sold in the privatesector, the rise was even more acute, with the index moving from100 to 204.5 in two years.

49. Ibid.50. Baykov, The Soviet Economic System, p. 104.

73

2. The development of the machinery andprocedures of economic planning

As we know, the NEP was not characterized merely by opendevelopment of commodity relations, possibilities of activity(within certain limits) granted to individual and privatecapitalist enterprises, and “financial autonomy” for state-owned enterprises. Together with these orientations andthese measures, others were adopted which were aimed atcountering the danger that development might take placealong an “ordinary capitalist road.” To this end, organs wereset up to coordinate the different branches of economic activ-ity and to work out plans.

The existence and functioning of these organs was not at allsufficient to eliminate the dangers of capitalist development,dangers that could be removed only by the application of anappropriate political line, but they did create, within the NEPframework, some of the preliminary conditions for progress bythe Soviet economy along the socialist road, and this was whyLenin ascribed great importance to their establishment.

The principal function of the planning organs was political.They prepared and accompanied the government’s interven-tions in the process of reproducing and transforming the mate-rial and social conditions of production. These organs servedas the fulcrum of a specific form of political practice, namely,planning. In a class-divided society like that of the NEP (andthe one that succeeded it), planning has a class content. It isaffected by class struggles and affects the way that these strug-gles proceed. The interventions determined by planning areof a juridico-political nature. They take place amid the con-tradictions of social reproduction. They mobilize in a concen-trated way the political and ideological forces of the rulingpower in order to lead the processes of production in a certain


direction and to alter their distinctive features, and so theforms of the processes of appropriation and distribution.

For “planning” to take place it is necessary that the inter-ventions in production and reproduction actually have an ef-fect, and that they be coordinated as regards their guidingprinciples. Such coordination is the purpose aimed at, but it isfar from always achieved. In the absence of adequate realcoordination, the direction actually given to the social processof production and reproduction may differ from what is “de-sired” by the political leadership. From the politicalstandpoint, however, what is decisive is the real process, notwhat is imagined.

The political interventions connected with planning do notdirectly modify the nature of the immediate production rela-tions, but only the conditions for their expanded reproduction.The place of the agents of production in relation to each otherand to the means of production is only indirectly modified byplanning—for example, when it favors the expansion of a par-ticular form of production (to which certain means of produc-tion are allocated by right of priority) while paralyzing anotherform, which it cuts off from some or all of the material means ofproduction (or even the labor power) that it needs for itsreproduction. A real upheaval in the relative positions of theagents of production always results, however, from classstruggle, from the activity of the producers, and the changingof the actual conditions of production.

The political interventions connected with planning, andwhich affect the reproduction of social relations, may be car-ried out either directly or indirectly. One of the forms ofindirect intervention (which was typical of the NEP but didnot disappear along with it) is that which operates in thesphere of money and prices. For example, an evolution of the“terms of trade” to the disadvantage of agriculture (by a fall inthe prices of its products relative to those of industrial goods)brings about a transfer of values to industry and the statesector, and so accelerates the expanded reproduction of themeans of production at the disposal of this sector, and of theproduction relations characteristic of this sector.


Even when the Soviet government intervenes in the repro-duction of social relations within the setting of a plan, the factof these interventions cannot be directly equated with prog-ress along the socialist road: it all depends on the type ofchange in social relations induced by the interventions. Con-trary to what has often been stated, all planning is not neces-sarily socialist: it can and often does, accompany variousforms of state capitalism. The socialist character of planningdepends, therefore, primarily on the class character of theruling power, but also on the content of the plans, the inten-tion they express to create the conditions for increasing con-trol by the working people over social reproduction.

The planning organs were established at the beginning ofthe NEP. Their increasing activity in the second half of the1920s resulted from the actual conditions under which theSoviet economy was functioning at that time. These condi-tions exerted an especially strong influence when the periodof restoration of industry (the reactivation of inherited equip-ment) drew to a close and the reconstruction period began (atthe end of 1925).

From that moment, indeed, the question of the allocation ofaccumulated capital arose in acute form. This allocationwould decide which industries would be given priority de-velopment and also the technology they would employ. It thushad a bearing on the division of labor.

When capital circulates “freely” between the variousbranches of production, the question of “priorities” and of the“technical” forms assumed by economic development is “set-tled” by the overall and differential action exerted by classstruggles on levels and differences of wages, by the strivingfor the maximum rate of profit, by the tendency for this rate tobe equalized between the different branches, and by the rela-tions of strength between the various industrial and financialgroups. Under the pressure of these forces, accumulated capi-tal is distributed in a determined way between the differentbranches, and invested in techniques which are also deter-mined, in accordance with the capital available to thecapitalists and with their estimates of future prospects. The


nonrealization of these estimates, which is inevitable giventhe very conditions under which capitalist expanded repro-duction then takes place, determines the form assumed byeconomic crises.

The existence of a state-owned industrial sector constitutesa considerable obstacle to the reproduction of this mode ofdistribution of capital between the different branches, but it isnot an absolute obstacle. The various industries comprisingthe state sector can be left “free” to borrow, either from one ormore investment banks or on a “finance market.” 1 Further-more, they can fix their prices, which to some degree deter-mines their power to finance themselves or to repay loans.This type of accumulation was not entirely ruled out duringthe first years of the NEP: the khozraschet of industrial andbanking enterprises facilitated it.

Nevertheless, the centralization of the industrial sector, thesubstantial size of the principal existing enterprises (and, evenmore, of those that the Bolshevik Party wished to develop),and fear (lest “market anarchy” and economic crises shouldreturn) formed major obstacles, in the 1920s, to this form ofaccumulation.

Above all, the political will of the Soviet government tobuild socialism was irreconcilable with a form of accumula-tion that implied “autonomous” development of the variousindustries and reproduction of capitalist forms of manage-ment. The existence of a state-owned industrial sector, to-gether with the intention to build socialism, thus determinedthe setting-up of planning organs (with the allocation of ac-cumulation funds as one of their tasks) and the extension of theactivity of these organs.

In the “war communism” period2 the Soviet governmenthad tried to guide production in accordance with the prioritiesdictated by the civil war. At that time the VSNKh functionedmainly as the organ responsible for centralized direction ofcurrent operations. When the NEP began, a new organappeared—the state planning commission, or Gosplan, whichwas responsible primarily for the preparation of long-term andmiddle-term plans. In addition, some other organs were given plan-ning tasks during the NEP.


I. The VSNKh

Though the VSNKh was chiefly concerned with currentoperational plans under “war communism,” a resolution of theNinth Party Congress (1920) entrusted it with the preparing ofa “single production plan for Soviet Russia as a whole and forthe Soviet republics allied with Russia.” This plan was tocover “the next historical period.”4

At the start of the NEP the role of the VSNKh tended todiminish, owing partly to the creation of Gosplan,5 but also tothe development of the financial autonomy of enterprises andthe role played by Gosbank and Narkomfin.

From 1925 on the problem of industrialization arose evermore sharply, and the role of the VSNKh increased again. Thisorgan now intervened to a substantial degree in the drawingup of various plans, and established an administrative struc-ture aimed at preparing plans for the economy as a whole,including agriculture and transport. Actually, owing to itsclose links with the leaders of industry, the VSNKh also gaveexpression to what they wanted—the development of the in-dustrial sectors under their authority. The enlargement of the“planning” activities of the VSNKh is thus to be seen asconnected with the increasing role that the leaders of industrytended to play from 1925 on. This enlargement caused conflictwith Gosplan and contributed to rendering more confused thediscussions that took place concerning problems of indus-trialization. Something will be said about this later.

II. Gosplan

Gosplan (the State Planning Commission) was, in principle,the organ responsible for drawing up plans. Established onFebruary 22, 1921, it succeeded Goselro, which had workedout a plan for electrification.6 It was not an organ for takingdecisions. Like the VSNKh, its task was merely to preparedrafts which were submitted to the organs of government,which alone had the power to take decisions and put them

3


into effect. This situation was expressed in the subordinationof Gosplan to the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnar-kom) and the Council for Labor and Defense.

During the NEP period, Gosplan’s activity often followedlines contradictory to that of the VSNKh. Whereas the latterbody was closely linked with the leaders of industry, theGosplan experts were more concerned with the problems ofagriculture and of overall economic equilibrium, which meantthat they were closer in interest to the financial organs—Gosbank and Narkomfin.

At the outset, Gosplan had only about forty members, mostly econo-mists and statisticians, seven or eight of whom wereParty members; the rest were bourgeois specialists.7 At thebeginning of 1927, Gosplan’s staff numbered 500, many ofwhom were former Mensheviks, but decisive responsibilitywas in the hands of Party members, notably Krzhizhanovsky,who had headed Goselro.8

During the second half of 1925, Gosplan worked out the firstannual plan for the national economy. This plan had no bind-ing power, as was shown by the name given to it: “controlfigures.” Covering the year 1925–1926, it was actually a mod-est document of about 100 pages intended to guide the variousPeople’s Commissariats in drawing up their own operationalprograms. The Presidium of Gosplan itself emphasized theapproximate nature of the document it had produced: when itwas drawn up, a great deal of needed information was lacking.

The control figures for 1926–1927 were already moresoundly based than the first set, but, as before, they were notobligatory. However this time, when the CLD (which hadsupreme oversight of economic decisions) ratified the controlfigures, it announced that if the operational plans of an admin-istrative organ conformed to the forecasts given in the controlfigures, there would be no need to obtain the CLD’s ratifica-tion of these plans.

The control figures for 1927–1928 made up a detaileddocument of 500 pages. They had been compiled in closecollaboration with the sectoral and regional planning organi-zations. A decree of June 8, 1927, strengthened, in principle,


the predominant role of Gosplan in the drawing up of plans,and a decision of the CC in August 1927 provided that thence-forth the control figures, once ratified, were to constitute ac-tual directives for the elaboration of operational plans and ofthe state budget.9 From that time on, operational plans weredrawn up along with the control figures.10

These facts show that the NEP, although involving de-velopment of commodity and money relations and increasedfinancial autonomy for state enterprises, entailed no renuncia-tion of endeavors to secure centralized and planned directionof the economy. On the contrary, an important aspect of theNEP record was the establishment of planning organs which,in principle, made possible better coordination of the de-velopment of the different branches of the economy.

The uncertainties of the political line decided on by theBolshevik Party at the end of 1925—at the very moment whenthe problem of the scope of the industrialization process to belaunched, and of the forms it should take, was coming on to theagenda—favored a proliferation of these organs. They drew up“draft plans” that were profoundly contradictory—acting, infact, as “supports” for different social forces and political ten-dencies which were then dividing the Party. As examples wecan take the existence within Gosplan of an industrial sectionwhich in 1926 drew up a particularly generous investmentplan, and the creation within the VSNKh of a special organ,Osvok, which became, in practice, independent of theVSNKh, and served for a certain period as a support for the“united opposition.”11

III. Osvok

Osvok (Osoboye soveshchanie po vosstanovleniyu osnov-nogo kapitala, “special commission for the restoration of fixedcapital”) was created by the Presidium of the VSNKh in March1925. At once it set about preparing its own version of afive-year plan, and formed sections and committees for the


purpose. Under the chairmanship of P. I. Pyatakov (one of theleaders of the “united opposition,” who was to be expelled fromthe Party in 1927 but was readmitted after a few months ofexile), Osvok acted quite independently of the VSNKh, andhad numerous ex-Menshevik economists, as well as non-Partyengineers and scientists working for it.12

In the absence, however, of any effective participation bythe masses in the working out of the plans, and of a firmlydefined political line (the lack of which was revealed by thescope assumed by the economic controversies of the periodand the rapid and divergent changes of content in the reso-lutions adopted by the Party’s leading organs), the documentsemanating from Gosplan, the VSNKh, and the other organsresponsible for preparing them set targets that were unrealis-tic and often mutually incompatible. In them were reflectedthe increasingly contradictory and ill-analyzed tendenciesprevailing in the Bolshevik Party.

Under these conditions, the economic plans produced didnot enable more effective control to be established over thecontradictions: on the contrary, given their mistaken orienta-tions and incoherences, the attempts that were made to “ap-ply” these plans at all costs merely aggravated the contradic-tions. In this sense, too, as we shall see, the crisis that opened in1927–1928 was not an economic crisis but a political one—the result of inadequacies and incoherences which werethemselves the outcome of extremely complex class struggles.

This situation was especially reflected in the frequent “revi-sion” of the industrial programs, “revision” that was obviouslybound up with changes in the economic and political con-juncture and the way in which this was seen by the Party. Thisaspect will be illustrated by an examination of the forecasts forindustrial investment in the year 1926–1927 and the Party’sdecisions on the matter.13

These “revisions” aggravated the economic imbalances,and caused the resulting shortages to fall more and moreheavily upon the peasantry. This was one of the forms as-sumed, in practice, by the increasing abandonment, from 1926on, of the requirements of the NEP. The “general crisis” of the


NEP was brought about by this abandonment and the result-ing aggravated contradictions.

This abandonment and the forms it assumed call for expla-nation. In order to arrive at such an explanation we need toanalyze the entire set of social relations and class contradic-tions that developed during the 1920s. Given the decisive roleplayed by the peasantry, this analysis must begin with theposition in the countryside.

Notes

1. This market is largely constituted by state enterprises which arein a position to grant loans to each other, or to subscribe to bondsissued by one or more of their number. During NEP these pos-sibilities were available to the state enterprises.

2. See volume I of the present work, pp. 152 ff.3. The book by Friedrich Pollock, Die Planwirtschaftlichen Ver-

suche in der Sowjetunion 1917–1927, first published in 1929 andrepublished in 1971 in Frankfurt, gives a very good account ofthe planning organs of the NEP period and what they did.

4. Ibid., pp. 233–234.5. See volume I of the present work, p. 153.6. See volume I of the present work.7. Pollock, Die Planwirtschaftlichen Versuche, p. 236.8. Planovoye Khozvaistvo, no. 10 (1925), p. 9; Plenum Byudzhetnoy

Komissii Ts.I.K. SSSR, p. 400; and Carr and Davies, Founda-tions, vol. I, p. 2, pp. 802–803.

9. For the control figures for these years see PlanovoyeKhozyaistvo, no. 11 (1929), pp. 167-168; Sobranie Zakonov, no.37 (1927), art. 373; K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 252 ff.

10. From 1931 the document prepared in this way became, once ithad been ratified, what was called “the annual plan” (see Dobb,Soviet Economic Development, p. 324).

11. See below, Part 4 of this volume.12. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, p. 2, pp. 844–845.13. See below, p. 386.

83

Part 2.The village during the NEP period.Differentiation and class struggles.Agricultural policy and transformationof social relations in agriculture

The analyses offered in the following pages relate to theeconomic and social structure of the Soviet countryside to-ward the end of the NEP. Their purpose is to throw light onthe conditions governing the articulation of class relations andclass struggles in the villages with agricultural policy and toshow how these relations and struggles led to the final crisis ofthe NEP.

It was the articulation of class struggles with agriculturalpolicy that determined the changes which the Soviet coun-tryside underwent between 1924 and 1929. These changescannot be seen as an “autonomous process,” dominated exclu-sively by some ineluctable “internal necessity.” They cannotbe divorced from the policy followed toward the peasantryand its various strata. In its turn, this policy needs to be relatedto the development of the contradictions within the urbansector and the way with which these were dealt—problemsthat will be considered later.

85

1. The social conditions of immediateproduction during the NEP period

During the NEP1 the bulk of agricultural production wasdue essentially to the activity of peasants working on theirown individual farms. These produced partly for the peasants’own needs and partly in order to exchange the peasants’ prod-ucts on the market. The state farms and kolkhozes played onlya minor role. The number of peasants and craftsmen engagedin collective forms of production was only 1.3 percent of thetotal in 1924 and 2.9 percent in 1928.2

Commodity production of grain (the branch of productionthat was of decisive importance for relations between townand country and in connection with the crisis that began at theend of 1927) was contributed mainly by the individual peasantfarms: in 1927 they provided 92.4 percent, while the sov-khozes provided only 5.7 percent and the kolkhozes 1.9 per-cent.3

I. Remarks on the social differentiation ofthe peasantry

The “individual peasant farms” constituted a heteroge-neous “social category.” Hidden behind this expression was thegreat complexity of production relations characteristic of ag-riculture in the NEP period. To this complexity correspondedthe social differentiation of the Soviet peasantry and the classcontradictions which resulted.


(a) The specific features of thedifferentiation among the peasantryduring the NEP period

Social differentiation among the Soviet peasantry was stillrelatively limited toward the end of the NEP period. On theone hand, the division of the land realized thanks to the Oc-tober Revolution (which was in some cases still going on solate as 1923–1924) had resulted in its more equal distribution.On the other, the process of social differentiation which de-veloped during the NEP period possessed special featureswhich have often been pointed out. This process resulted in areduction in the proportion of poor peasants in the total peas-ant population and an increase in the proportion of middlepeasants, while the economic importance of the kulaks grewonly slightly.

The slow transformation of the structure of the Soviet peas-antry was based mainly on a twofold process affecting thepoor peasants, whereas one section of them joined the pro-letariat, another entered the ranks of the middle peasantry andstrengthened this stratum.4

From 1925 on the specific character of this differentiationwas demonstrated by investigations sponsored by Rabkrin, bythe Commissariat of Finance, and by other administrativebodies.5 These investigations refuted the claims of the Leftopposition which alleged that Soviet agriculture was under-going a process of capitalist differentiation leading to polari-zation, with the proletariat being strengthened at one end,and the rural bourgeoisie at the other.

The theses put before the Fifteenth Party Congressexplicitly recognized these distinctive features:

The peculiarities of that differentiation are a result of the alteredsocial conditions. These peculiarities consist in the fact that, incontradiction to the capitalist type of development, which isexpressed in the weakening of the middle peasantry, while thetwo extremes (the poor and the rich farmers) grow, in our countryit is the reverse. We have a process of strengthening the middlepeasant group, accompanied, so far, by a certain growth of the


rich peasants from among the more well-to-do middle peasants,and a diminution of the poor groups, of which some becomeproletarianised while others—the greater part—are graduallytransferring to the middle group.6

This presentation was, nevertheless, inadequate, since itreferred to “social conditions” in general, and lead the readerto suppose that these sufficed to account for the type of differ-entiation noted, whereas this was not the case.

True, the type of differentiation noted was taking placewithin the general conditions of Soviet power, with nationali-zation of the land and the functioning of the mir given new lifeby the Agrarian Code of 1922.7

However, within the setting of these general conditions, theform taken by the differentiation of the Soviet peasantry wasdue to the political line that was followed (characterized inparticular by the tax abatements enjoyed by the poor andmiddle peasants) and also, and especially, to the struggleswaged by the poor and middle peasants themselves with aview to better equipping and organizing themselves.8

(b) Statistics illustrating classdifferentiation in the Soviet peasantryin 1927

A great variety of statistics have been produced concerningclass differentiation in the Soviet peasantry. Here I shall usethe ones calculated by S. G. Strumilin. This Soviet economistand statistician tried to classify peasant farms in accordancewith the criteria proposed by Lenin at the Second CominternCongress.9 By these criteria the poor peasants were those whocould get from their farms only what they needed to live on, orwho even needed to take on additional paid work in order tosurvive. The middle peasants were those who had a smallsurplus which, when the harvest was good, enabled them toaccumulate a little. The rich peasants were those whosesurplus was sufficiently large and regular to enable them toaccumulate and to exploit the other rural strata by employingwage labor, practicing usury, and so on.


These definitions, as applied by Strumilin and the CentralStatistical Board, gave the following table10 showing the socialdivisions of the Soviet peasantry in 1926–1927:

Social divisions percentPoor peasants 29.4Middle peasants 67.5Rich peasants 3.1

These figures were necessarily only approximate.11 Never-theless, it is clear that the kulaks were few in number, and,especially, that their share in the sale of produce outside thevillage was a minor one, as is proved by statistics which,though of different origin, agree on this point.

(c) The supply of grain to the market andthe class differentiation of thepeasantry

According to the statistics quoted by Grosskopf, in 1925 itwas the poor and middle peasants who provided most of thegrain that came on to the market—over 88 percent, as against11.8 percent provided by the rich peasants.12

The importance of the sales of grain effected by the poor andmiddle peasants (despite the relatively small size of the har-vest calculated per head) was due to the fact that they wereobliged to sell their crops (for lack of liquid assets) in order topay their debts and their taxes (which fell due in the autumn)and to make indispensable purchases of manufactured goods,including the equipment their farms lacked, and acquisition ofwhich would enable them to reduce their dependence on thekulaks. The poor and middle peasants played an even biggerrole in the provisioning of the towns, for the greater part ofthe grain they sold found its way there toward the end of thesummer and in the autumn, whereas the rich peasants, in thecourse of the year, sold part of their surplus on the villagemarket.13

These facts show clearly the erroneousness of the oversim-plified thesis of a “kulak strike” which Kamenev put forward


starting in 1925 to explain the procurement difficulties of1925–1926.14 At that time, Kamenev, relying on figures fromthe Central Statistical Board which were based not on peas-ants’ incomes but on area of land possessed,15 declared thatkulak farms made up 12 percent of all peasant farms and held61 percent of the “grain surplus.”16 From these figuresKamenev drew the mistaken conclusion that the rich peasantsreceived most of the money that was made in the countryside,and were the principal buyers of the consumer goods, andindustrially made means of production bought there. Thisthesis tended to give backing to the ideas of Preobrazhensky,who claimed that to fix high prices for industrial productsand low prices for agricultural products would not hurt themass of the peasantry—since the poor and middle peasantswere supposed not to participate to any great extent in com-mercial exchanges—while it would enable the state to achievea higher rate of accumulation by levying a “tribute” from therichest peasants.

Contrary to these claims, about three-quarters of the grainsent to the towns came at that time from the farms of the poorand middle peasants, and they bought more than 80 percent ofthe manufactured goods sold in the villages,17 especially witha view to providing better equipment for their farms, whichwere gravely lacking in instruments of production.

The proportions given above for the origin of the grain puton the market are confirmed by the figures Stalin mentioned inhis speech of May 28, 1928, to the students of the SverdlovUniversity. He showed that in 1926–1927 the kulaks provided20 percent of this grain, as against 74 percent provided by thepoor and middle peasants and 6 percent by the collective andstate farms.18

(d) The social and political role of thekulaks

It would, of course, be a grave mistake to deduce from thesefacts that the social and political role played at that time by thekulaks was negligible. On the contrary, it was very important.


But its importance lay not in the sphere of production butelsewhere: it lay in the sphere of circulation, in the commer-cial relations the kulaks maintained with the poor and middlepeasants; in the sphere of ideology, in the illusion they offeredof possible future individual enrichment on a substantialscale, an illusion to which a certain number of middle peas-ants succumbed, consequently turning away from collectiveforms of production; in the sphere of politics, especiallythrough the influence the rich peasants could exercise in thepeasants’ assemblies (the skhod).19

The important role played by the rich peasants was rootedin the nature of the social relations that reproduced them-selves under the NEP: wage labor, leasing of land, hiring outof agricultural implements, and capitalist trade. These rela-tions enabled the kulaks to wield great influence—out of allproportion with the number of their farms or their share inproduction. It was on the basis of these social relations thatthere developed the struggle of the rich peasants to exertincreasing domination over the poor and middle peasants.

However, it was one thing to recognize these facts but quiteanother to conclude from them that the kulaks possessed deci-sive economic influence in production and in the provision ofsupplies for the towns, as the Trotskyist-Zinovievist oppos-ition mistakenly did conclude.20 Although the conclusionsdrawn by this opposition were rejected by the BolshevikParty, its “analyses” left in circulation a distorted picture ofthe social relations existing in the Soviet countryside. Despitethe ultimate political defeat of the opposition, the essentialelements of its analyses were present, in barely modified form,in the interpretation that the Party leadership gave in 1928 and1929 to the procurement crisis (when it tried to explain thiscrisis by a “kulaks’ strike”) and in the way that it sought to“deal with” the contradictions among the peasants and thecontradictions that opposed the peasantry as a whole to theSoviet power.

We must now examine successively the role of the differentstrata of the peasantry in the procurement crisis of 1927–1928,and the role that these strata were in a position to play in


future increases in agricultural production, especially grainproduction.

II. The class foundations of theprocurement crisis of 1927–1928

In order to reveal the class foundations of the procurementcrisis of 1927–1928 it is necessary to study the way in whichthis crisis proceeded. This I shall try to do in the followingpages, relying again upon the analyses made by S. Grosskopf,who has demolished many of the “accepted ideas” on thematter.

(a) The first phase of the procurement andthe sales made by the kulaks

During the first quarter (July to September) of the agricul-tural campaign of 1927–1928 the quantities of grain procuredby the state and cooperative organs were, as we have seen,21

greater than those procured in the very good year 1926–1927.This increase was all the more remarkable because the har-vest of 1927 was smaller than that of the previous year,22 andthe distribution of grain production was unfavorable: the re-gions most affected by the fall in production were those de-scribed as “having a surplus,” because their production nor-mally served to meet some of the grain needs of the lessfavored regions (those described as “having a deficit”).

Analysis shows that the increase in procurement duringJuly–September 1927 came mainly from the rich peasants. Onthe one hand, it was they who had priority as regards means ofproduction and transport, since a big proportion of thesemeans belonged to them; on the other, they were in a hurry tosell before the month of October, the time when the poor andmiddle peasants usually brought their grain to market, therebylowering the obtainable price. Furthermore, since the policyfollowed by the Soviet authorities in 1926–1927 had pre-


vented grain prices from rising in the spring of 1927, the richpeasants had no hope of a price-rise in the spring of 1928, andthis gave them an extra incentive for getting rid of their pro-duce quickly—hence the increase in procurement in July–September 1927.23

The accelerated delivery of grain by the rich peasants dur-ing the summer of 1927 does not mean, of course, that they hadnot stocked up a certain amount of grain. It does show, how-ever, that in the autumn of 1927 the bulk of the “reserves”held in the countryside was not concentrated in their hands.24

(b) The second phase of the procurementand the struggles of the poor and middlepeasants

Thus, from autumn on it was usually the poor and middlepeasants who supplied the grain procured. In the autumn of1927 these supplies failed to materialize.

Two immediate reasons account for what happened. First,the fall in the supply of manufactured goods to the rural areasin the second half of 1927. Part of the selling of grain done bythe poor and middle peasants was intended to secure the cashthey needed to buy manufactured goods, in particular thesmall-scale instruments of production which they lacked. In sofar as in the autumn of 1927 there was also a decline in thesupply of these products, there was as well a decline in salesof grain. The tax reductions which had been granted to thepoor and middle peasants also meant that the “constraint tosell” imposed on them by their fiscal obligations was now lessacute.

Another immediate reason for the fall in procurement fromthe autumn of 1927 on is connected with a certain degree ofnegligence on the part of the state and cooperative organs,which in 1927 showed particular passivity. This was due to thefact that the official organs were now less afraid of competitionfrom private traders, who had been subjected to more severerestrictions than previously. Their passivity also resulted fromthe contradictory directives issued by the central authority to


the official procurement agencies: whereas Gosplan called onthem actively to encourage the peasants to sell their crops, atthe same time directives from the Party and the governmentwarned them against possible competition among themselves.The Soviet authorities were indeed concerned to prevent suchcompetition among the procurement organs from bringingabout a rise in the price of grain. One of the consequences ofthese directives was that most of the buyers on behalf of theprocurement organs waited for the peasants to come on theirown initiative to offer them grain—which the peasants didnot do.25

The shortage of industrial goods available in the coun-tryside, the reduction in taxation and the greater passivity ofthe procurement organs do not, however, furnish more than apartial explanation of the fall in grain sales. To complete theexplanation we need to examine more closely the conditionsunder which the poor and middle peasants carried out mostof their selling of grain.

It can be seen already from the facts given above (those thatshow the high proportion of grain sold from farms where thesmallest amount was available per head) that marketing ofgrain did not correspond, broadly speaking, to the existenceof a “surplus” of grain held by the peasants. Such a “surplus”would imply that the basic needs of the poor and middlepeasants for grain (for their own food, for feeding their ani-mals, and for building up reserves adequate to enable them towait for the next harvest without anxiety) had been largelycovered by their production. That was far from being the truesituation.

Actually, in 1927–1928, when weather conditions weregenerally poor, the bulk of the peasants, who lacked adequatemeans of production, harvested only a poor crop. To be sure,these peasants, taken as a whole, sold large quantities of grain,but they did so only to the extent that they were obliged to, inorder to pay their taxes or to buy industrial goods, if thesewere to be had.26 When this constraint or this possibilityceased to be present, they sold as little grain as they could, for,in the case of most of the poor and middle peasants, such sales


entailed serious hardship. They therefore preferred to im-prove their level of personal consumption, and of consump-tion by their underfed animals, and also, if possible, to keep atleast a minimum of reserve stocks. For the peasants, havingsuch reserves at their disposal meant limiting the risk that theymight be compelled to buy grain from the rich peasants beforethe next harvest became available, and, since such purchasesusually had to be made on credit, to become ever more de-pendent on the rich peasants.

Investigations carried out in 1926–1927, a year of good har-vest, showed that even in the so-called surplus zones, theneeds of agriculture itself were not being adequately met, asregards personal consumption by most of the peasants, feed-ing of their animals, and maintenance of stocks of seed-cornand reserve supplies.27 This applied even more in 1927, whenthe harvest was considerably smaller. And it was just at thatmoment that the supply of industrial goods to the rural areasdeclined sharply and that taxes were reduced. Under thoseconditions for the poor and middle peasants to have brought tothe procurement agencies the same amount of grain as in therevious year would have necessitated a political willingnesson their part which did not exist at that time, and which hadhardly been prepared for by the history of the Party’s relationswith the peasant masses.28

III. The forms of struggle of the poor andmiddle peasants in the NEP period

The problem of the procurement crisis cannot be isolatedfrom the low standard of living of the bulk of the peasantry,29

the inadequacy of the means of production at their disposal,and the struggle of the poor and middle peasants to avoidfalling into increasing dependence on the rich peasants.

(a) The struggle to acquire means ofproduction

For the poor and middle peasants the chief purpose of theirsales of produce was to acquire the means needed to increase


their production, and thereby to reduce their dependence onthe rich peasants who owned a large proportion of the meansof cultivation and of transport.

On the morrow of the division of the land, which was gene-ally not accompanied by a share-out of the other means ofproduction,30 the poor and middle peasants were the onesworse off in this respect. Subsequently, therefore, it was theywho suffered most from the meagerness of the supply ofinstruments of labor to agriculture. In 1927 the total numberof machines and implements possessed by Soviet agriculturewas only two-thirds the prewar figure. A very large proportionof the implements and machines that were available wereheld by the rich peasants, who hired them out at high rates tothe poor and middle peasants.

Investigations carried out in 1924—and in 1927 the situationhad hardly begun to change—showed that scythes were inshort supply and most of the peasants had to do their reapingwith sickles. Iron ploughs were also lacking. Industrysupplied very few, just as it supplied little steel to the villagecraftsmen. Most of the peasants had to do their ploughing witha sokha—a wooden swing-plough. The other tools needed forcultivation were also largely unavailable, as were axes andsaws.31 As for reapers and threshers, these were mostly pos-sessed by the rich peasants.

The inadequate provision of instruments of labor to the poorand middle peasants was the underlying factor in the de-velopment of specific forms of dependence by the mass of thepeasants upon the rich peasants, and the specific forms ofexploitation to which the latter subjected the working peas-ants. This inadequacy explains the extreme fragility of theeconomy of the poor and middle peasants and the close inter-dependence between the supply of means of production to therural areas and the amount of produce the poor and middlepeasants were able and willing to supply for procurement.What happened in the agricultural year 1925–1926 is ex-tremely instructive from this standpoint, as it was a sort of“dress rehearsal” for the crisis of 1927–1928, resulting, how-ever, in different solutions.

In 1925–1926 the harvest was a good one. During the first


quarter of the agricultural year (July to September), off-villagesales by the peasants were considerably bigger than in theprevious year, but then, as was to happen again in 1927–1928,these sales fell sharply during the second quarter (October–December). It was in this connection that Kamenev spoke of a“kulaks’ strike.” Now, not only does analysis of the farmswhich sold grain at different phases of the year show that thisformulation of Kamenev’s was wrong, but, above all, the sub-sequent progress of sales shows clearly that it was not amatter of a “strike” by a minority of peasants but of a massphenomenon mainly connected with a poor state of supply tothe rural areas of the manufactured goods purchased by thepoor and middle peasants. The immediate origin of this crisislay in a mistake in the Soviet government’s policy toward thepeasant masses. The situation could then be quickly redressedby a simple conjunctural measure, namely, improved supplyof manufactured goods to the rural areas. Eventually thegovernment’s plan for acquiring grain was fulfilled in 1925–1926 to the extent of 97 percent, without any need to resort to“emergency measures.”

It was thus demonstrated that unless there was a very poorharvest the level of grain “surplus” and of procurement wasdecided mainly by the policy of the Soviet state itself—itsprice policy, the organization of grain purchases, and the sup-ply of manufactured goods to the peasant masses.32

The supply of instruments of production to the poor andmiddle peasants (gravely inadequate in 1927–1928)33 was,moreover, a decisive factor not only in relation to procurementbut also in connection with the support rendered by theSoviet government to the struggle of the peasant masses toresist the pressure exerted upon them by the kulaks.

The lack of equipment from which the poor and middlepeasants suffered meant that, in many cases, they were ob-liged to lease part (or sometimes all) of their land to the richpeasants, to sell them their labor power, or to hire from themthe means of labor (including draught animals). Thus, in 1926, inmore than 72 percent of the cases where land wasleased out, this was done by peasants who lacked means of


production. Again, more than 52 percent of the wage earnersemployed in agriculture were poor, or even middle, peasantswho were unable to cultivate their land because they had notenough implements. Very often, too, as we know, poor andmiddle peasants were compelled to “employ” the owner of ahorse or of a plough, who preferred to figure as an “agricul-tural worker.”

A Rabkrin report dated 1927 acknowledged that “up to now,we have . . . given little attention to the social relationsengendered by the practice of lending and borrowing articlesused in farming.” 34

Yet these social relations weighed very heavily upon thepoor and middle peasants. It was in order to escape from themthat these peasants, wanting to buy implements, went so far asto sell part of the grain that they needed in order to feedthemselves and create reserves. At the same time, the shortageof implements available on the market led these same peas-ants to cut down their sales, while it also aggravated theirdependence on the kulaks. Similarly, the policy of high pricesfor manufactured goods, advocated by Preobrazhensky, wasiable to reduce the capacity of the poor and middle peasantsto equip themselves, and so to increase their dependence onthe kulaks and to strengthen the latter.

Two facts will suffice to show the effects on class relations inthe countryside of an inadequate supply of agriculturalequipment. On the one hand, according to an investigationcarried out in 1924–1925 in the province of Penza, this inade-quacy meant that the middle peasants could sow only between29 and 37 percent of the sowable land which they possessed tograin crops—in the case of the poor peasants this percentagewas as little as 18 or 19 percent, whereas for the rich peasantsit was nearly 40 percent. Furthermore, through not beingcultivated well enough (especially through not beingploughed and reaped at the proper times, the yield from theland of those who “employed” the owner of a horse andplough was more than 18 percent below average, whereas theyield from the land of peasants who owned an iron ploughwas 23 percent above average.35


On the other hand, the poor and middle peasants often hadto pay out the equivalent of nearly one-fifth of the value oftheir crop in order to hire farm implements and draughtanimals.36

Thus, the struggle waged by the poor and middle peasantsto equip their farms adequately was also a struggle to freethemselves from domination and exploitation by the richpeasants, and the delivery of grain by the poor and middlepeasants to the procurement agencies was closely bound upwith this struggle and with the capacity of the Soviet gov-ernment to provide material support for the poor and middlepeasants in their struggle. Generally speaking, this supportwas very inadequate. In 1927 it was largely missing. Theprocurement crisis was due to a great extent to this situation.

The inadequacy of the support given to the efforts of thepoor and middle peasants to equip their farms, a neglectwhich played into the hands of the rich peasants and com-promised the expansion both of the harvest and of procure-ment, is all the more striking in that Lenin had often drawn theParty’s attention to both the economic and the political import-ance of this problem. For instance, in the midst of the civilwar he said: “The socialist state must extend the widest possi-ble aid to the peasants, mainly by supplying the middle peas-ants with products of urban industries and, especially,improved agricultural implements, seed, and various mate-rials . . . ” 37

At the beginning of the NEP Lenin returned to this prob-lem. He emphasized that the Soviet government must set- itself the task of supplying the poor peasants with more indus-trial goods than the capitalists had previously supplied tothem, and that what had to be supplied was “not only cottongoods for the farmer and his family, but also badly neededmachines and implements, even if they are of the simplestkind.” 38

These passages are of particular importance. They showthat, as early as 1921, Lenin had formulated the idea of analliance between the workers and the peasants, the materialfoundation of which was to be the provision of means of labor


(“even of the simplest kind”) to the toiling masses of thecountryside. This was the concept of an alliance “based onsteel” and not merely on textiles.

Yet the policy actually followed over the years had not beenthat policy: only in 1926–1927 did current supplies of imple-ments to the rural areas slightly exceed their prewar level.

(b) The struggle of the poor and middlepeasants to strengthen forms oforganization that would consolidatetheir independence of the rich peasants

The struggle of the poor and middle peasants to organizethemselves so as to consolidate their independence from therich peasants calls for special attention. We find hereconfirmation of Lenin’s analyses pointing to the possibility ofa transition to socialism through organizing the workingpeasants within the framework of the NEP,39 a confirmationall the more remarkable because it resulted from a develop-ment which, as Molotov acknowledged, had not received sys-tematic and constant support from the Bolshevik Party.40 (Thisdoes not mean that this self-organization took place withoutany connection to the ideas of socialism, which in fact pene-trated in a thousand different ways into the midst of the toilingpeasantry.)

One of the forms under which the poor and middle peasantsorganized themselves was the associations for joint utilizationof means of production. As a rule, these associations broughttogether only a small number of farms—usually less than ten.They were of particular importance in the grain-growing re-gions, in the steppes, in the Ukraine, the Ural region, andSiberia. They were important especially for the utilization ofseeders and threshers. In the Ural region 32.9 percent and28.2 percent, respectively, of these machines were used incommon in this way, while in Siberia the corresponding per-centages were 29.8 and 32.3. In the case of tractors the per-centage was even 100.41

The poor and middle peasants resorted also to traditional


forms of mutual aid, such as supryaga, by which between fiveand seven farms jointly utilized labor power, draught animalsand implements, and organized themselves to obtain credit. Inthis setting there developed genuine collective work, whichresulted in many poor and middle peasants being able tocultivate part of the land they held as a result of the agrarianrevolution. This movement also engendered tens of thousandsof “simple” producers’ cooperatives which did not enjoy thestatus of kolkhozes and were, as a rule, not officially regis-tered. Various investigations have revealed the dimensions ofthis movement. 42 But, in the report already mentioned,Molotov gave no attention to these simple forms: what hehailed was the advantages of “large units” of production, of“the larger enterprise.” 43

In the Ukraine this form of the poor peasants’ struggle wasespecially well developed. It was connected with the activityof the “poor peasants’ committees” (Komnezamy, or KNS)which had appeared during the civil war. They continued toexist in that republic even after the ending of “war com-munism,” and also developed during the NEP period. In 1925more than 14 percent of the peasants in the Ukraine belongedto these KNS, which meant a very high percentage of the poorpeasants. Research shows that most of the KNS were solidlyorganized and contributed effectively to raise production andthe standard of living of their members. Not only did theyarrange for mutual aid among the latter, and start to introducenew methods of cultivation (by modifying the system of rota-tion of crops), but they also helped the other peasants and tookpart in the forming of cooperatives and of other forms of as-sociation for joint work.

Other facts, too, testify to the importance of “spontaneous”tendencies to create peasant organizations for joint use of thesoil. There was the creation of the “communities for openingup remote tracts of land.” When they adopted this form of asso-ciation, the peasants involved decided to go in for collectiveforms of cultivation (poselki and vyselki) instead of individualholdings. These collective forms were established especiallyin certain regions (such as the provinces of Samara, Saratov,


and Orel) where substantial tracts of land were situated too farfrom the old villages to be regularly cultivated by peasants operating from these villages. It is significant that this move-ment was inspired mainly by poor peasants and that instead offorming new “land associations” of the traditional type, theyadopted collective forms of cultivation, and because of this itwas possible to ensure a rotation of crops covering severalyears and to avoid the fragmentation resulting from the formermir.44

True, from the standpoint of the general structure of Sovietagriculture, the existence of these various types of organiza-tion of the poor and middle peasants did not alter the massivepredominance of individual peasant farming. Nevertheless their existence, by the very multiplicity of the forms theyassumed and the liveliness and depth of the tendencies theymanifested (despite the absence of systematic aid from theSoviet government and the hostility of the rich peasants),shows how great were the possibilities for transition to asocialist organization of agriculture.45

IV. Agricultural policy and theprocurement crisis of 1927–1928

The facts mentioned above show that the procurement crisisof 1927–1928 was not due mainly to a “kulaks’ strike,” but wasthe result of a much more complex process in which somemistakes committed by the Soviet government in relation tothe poor and middle peasants played their part. As a result ofthese mistakes, the initiative and independent class action ofthese peasants suffered restriction. Subsequently, the indis-criminate resort to “emergency measures,” by hitting themiddle peasants as well as the kulaks, brought about even ashift in the alignment of class forces, and enabled the kulaks toincrease their ideological and political influence over an im-portant section of the peasantry. In this connection, the resis-tance put up by the peasant masses to the measures taken by


the Soviet government from 1928 on not only resulted fromtheir immediate reaction to encroachment on their materialinterests, but also reflected the influence that the kulaks thenwielded over them. It was in that sense that a “kulak threat”made its appearance in 1928–1929.46

In order to appreciate this process and how it was linkedwith the Soviet government’s peasant policy, we must brieflyrecall certain facts.

(a) The shortcomings of agricultural policyin the years 1924–192

The shortcomings of agricultural policy in the years be-tween 1924 and 1927 were due, in the first place, to theinadequate supply of instruments of production to the ruralareas, where it was the poor and middle peasants who hadmost need of them.47

It must be observed that the “cost” of supplying machineryand implements to agriculture did not amount at any timeduring the NEP to a burden that could be thought too heavyfor the Soviet economy to bear. Thus, in 1926–1927, the suminvolved in these supplies came to 122.1 million prewar rou-bles, or 0.8 percent of the national income.48 It will be seen,too, that the supply of agricultural equipment to be bought bythe peasants did not, in principle, impose any “charge” uponthe state budget. As for supplies on credit, these would havecalled for only limited advances which could be quickly re-covered through the increase in production and in moneyincomes.

The smallness in the amount of equipment supplied wasespecially detrimental to the poor and middle peasants. Theyenjoyed, in practice, no priority in receiving this equipment,and the credit system functioned in such a way that they werenot the chief beneficiaries of loans either.49 Moreover, theimportance of supplying the rural areas with traditional in-struments of production, or improved versions of these (whichthe poor and middle peasants could acquire most easily), wasmuch underestimated.


Thus, Molotov, in his report to the Fifteenth Party Congresson “Work in the Rural Areas” referred dismissively to thesupplying of simple means of production to the peasants as a“sorry ‘progress.’”50

The lack of an economic effort to give priority aid to the poorand middle peasants entailed serious consequences. Suchpriority aid was needed from the political standpoint, becausesupport for the Soviet government from the poor and middlepeasants was indispensable if the dictatorship of the pro-letariat was to be consolidated; and from the economicstandpoint as well, because it was the farms of the poor andmiddle peasants that held the biggest potentialities for in-creasing production, since they were underequipped—a largeproportion of their land was not even being cultivated and,because they had no implements of their own, the yield fromwhat was cultivated was lower then anywhere else, and somost susceptible to rapid increase.

(b) The underestimation of thepotentialities of the poor and middlepeasants’ farms

Generally speaking, the shortcomings of agricultural policyin 1924–1927 were bound up with a definite underestimationof the potentialities of the poor and middle peasants’ farms.51

In 1928 and 1929, even within the setting of the NEP, thepotentialities of Soviet agriculture were still considerable,provided that the peasants were properly supplied with in-struments of labor and helped in their efforts to extend thearea under cultivation and increase yields, and to organizethemselves more effectively.

The “image” of the Soviet peasant as “routine-minded” and“lazy” is false. To be convinced of this one has only to notethat in 1925–1926 gross agricultural production reached theprewar level, even though there were fewer means of produc-tion in the countryside than at an earlier date.52

The underequipment of agriculture was due to old equip-ment wearing out and the crying inadequacy of supplies of


new equipment. It was not due at all to any so-called indiffer-ence or “indolence” on the part of the peasantry. On thecontrary, statistics show that in 1927 expenditures on pur-chases of equipment were 70 percent greater than they werebefore the war.53

The economist Oganovsky observed how much greater thepotentialities of agriculture in this period were than they hadbeen before the Revolution. He wrote: “Neither the economicand social facts nor the importance and role of the cadres andthe factors of production are comparable. And if the contextsare incommensurable there cannot, either, be anything incommon between the results obtained then and those obtain-able at the present time, as we can observe here and now.” 54

Some estimates made at that time sought to take account,partly at least, of the potentialities of NEP agriculture, espe-cially with a view to forecasting the agricultural productionand the “net balance.” 55 Thus, Osvok estimated the grainharvest that could be obtained in 1931 at 87.8 million metrictons—an increase of 14.9 percent on 1926—which shouldprovide a “net balance” of 14.6 million metric tons—56 per-cent more than in 1926, which meant a net market availabilityof 18.7 percent.

This estimate was actually based on a very low estimate ofthe yield to be obtained in 1931. It assumed that this yieldwould be the same as in 1928, so that only the area cultivatedwould be larger. It was all the more certainly an underesti-mate in that, already in 1926, the yield per hectare was higherthan the prewar average,56 despite the underequipment fromwhich Soviet agriculture still suffered. If sales of means ofproduction to agriculture had continued at the same rate as in1925 it would have been reasonable to expect a grain harvestof about 92 million metric tons, which would have given a“net balance” in the region of 17 million metric tons.57

The actual potentialities of NEP agriculture at the end of the1920s were all the greater in that the poor and middle peas-ants were at that time ready to enter step by step upon theroad of cooperation, of collective labor and production (pro-vided that they were really helped by the Soviet government,


and not subjected to measures that harmed them and shookthe foundations of the worker-peasant alliance). These formsof labor and production implied—if the peasants entered intothem voluntarily—great possibilities of increased harvests.They made possible a fuller utilization of the land area, withemployment of machinery and carrying out of cultivation workwith the minimum loss of time. This was confirmed by ex-perience during that period.

However, the Party leadership tended to underestimate thepossibilities of NEP agriculture and not to reckon with thereal requirements for developing it along the cooperative andcollective road.

(c) The small amount of aid given to thedevelopment of collective farming andcooperation

From the beginning of the NEP to the Fifteenth Congress(at the end of 1927), the efforts made by the poor and middlepeasants to undertake various forms of collective labor orproduction remained without systematic support. Molotovrecognized this fact, though omitting to draw any practicalconclusions from it, when he declared: “It is now important torealise . . . that we are lagging behind, that we are not keep-ing pace with the new Socialist elements now developing inthe village. What we lack now is courage and perseverance instimulating the collectivisation of the village, primarily be-cause we do not know enough about it.” 58

At that time, Molotov did not conclude from this observationthat a substantial acceleration of development towards collecti-ve farming was really possible. He said, on the contrary, that“the development of individual enterprise along the socialistpath is a long and tedious process. It will require many yearsto pass over from individual to communal farming.”59

This underestimation of the possibilities of collective farm-ing was accompanied by inadequate backing of the coopera-tive movement.

We know the role that Lenin ascribed to cooperation as a


form leading to socialist organization of production.60 Yet by1927, despite the undeniable development of cooperation, theBolshevik Party had failed to give it all the necessary aid,being influenced in this by the idea that cooperation mainlyserved the interests of the rich peasants—whereas experienceshowed how important it was for the poor and middle peas-ants. Here, too, Molotov, in his report to the Fifteenth PartyCongress, noted the insufficiency of the work accomplished.After quoting Lenin on cooperation he said that “this state-ment made by Lenin has not yet been fully appreciated by us.At any rate, it has not been sufficiently reflected in our practi-cal work.” 61

And yet a number of Party resolutions had already drawnattention to the role that development of the cooperativesshould play. I may mention, in particular, a resolution adoptedby the Twelfth Conference of the CPR(B), in August 1922,which emphasized the importance of agricultural credit, and aresolution of the Thirteenth Party Congress (May 1924), whichpointed out that the development of cooperative trade wouldenable the poor peasants to increase their production andsales while limiting the power of the kulaks.62 In April 1925the Fifteenth Party Conference reaffirmed the need to or-ganize agricultural credit. It called on the cooperatives to takeover the processing and marketing of agricultural produce andthe supply of means of production to the peasant masses. Thisresolution also appealed to the cooperatives to encourage thedevelopment of all possible forms of collective working of thesoil.

In fact, despite these resolutions, and Lenin’s statementsabout the role to be played by the cooperatives (especially in“raising the small economy and in facilitating its transition. . . to large-scale production on the basis of voluntary associ-ation”),63 the development of the cooperatives was not sup-ported by the Soviet state with all the necessary vigor. Thecooperatives were not drawn firmly in a direction that wouldhave strengthened within a short time the farms worked by thepoor and middle peasants, thereby also ensuring growth andregularity in grain procurement.


On October 1, 1927, nearly 40 percent of the Soviet peasantswere, nevertheless, members of state cooperative societies—but these societies were much more concerned with buyingagricultural produce from the peasants than with selling themmeans of production, which meant that the poor and middlepeasants took relatively little interest in them.64 As regards thecredit cooperatives, their activity benefited less than 20 per-cent of the peasants, they charged relatively high rates ofinterest, and from 1925 on they granted loans only for com-paratively large amounts, exceeding the needs and capacitiesof the poor peasants, so that the latter got almost no advantagefrom the existence of these cooperatives and had to turn to theusurers.65

The situation that existed at the end of the NEP was dueboth to the inadequate attention paid to the needs of the poorand middle peasants and to the corruption and negligence thatreigned very widely in the grassroots administration of thecooperative system. The funds placed at the disposal of thecooperatives by the state for the purpose of making loans tothe poor peasants remained practically unused. The localcooperatives did not take the steps needed for these funds tobe employed. Moreover, they were too remote in their activi-ties from the conditions in which the peasants lived, and wereoften held back by the bureaucratic control exercised by thedistrict soviets.66 This state of affairs was, of course, related tothe feebleness of the Party’s roots in the countryside, a crucialproblem to which I shall return.

V. The aggravation of the contradictionsthrough the peasant and agriculturalpolicy followed in 1928 and 1929.

In the light of the facts which have been mentioned, theprocurement crisis of 1927–1928 thus appears as not at all theresult of an “inevitable economic crisis” but as the outcome ofpolitical mistakes. These were due to the feebleness of the


Party’s roots in the countryside and also to ideological reasonswhich led the Party (even while recognizing that agriculturewas the basis of economic development) to underestimate inpractice the aid that should have been given to the peasantmasses, and to concentrate nearly all its efforts on industry.

The procurement crisis of 1927–1928, unlike that of 1925–1926, did not lead to a rectification of agricultural policy. Theincreasing stress laid on large-scale industrialization blockedthe way to any serious and rapid improvement in the supply ofmanufactured goods to the rural areas. At the same time, ful-filling the industrialization program required that procure-ment be maintained, at all costs, at a sufficiently high level.The immediate consequence was the imposition of the“emergency measures” at the beginning of 1928, and the im-possibility, despite attempts made by the Party, of giving themup. Yet the renewal of these measures did not help to improvethe situation in agriculture—quite the contrary. There wassomething worse, however: the renewal of the emergencymeasures was felt by a large section of the peasants to signifyan abandonment of the worker-peasant alliance as it hadexisted until then, while the worsening of the economic situa-tion in the countryside also caused them discontent. Thisdetermined a realignment of class forces in the village, andincreased the ideological and political influence of the kulaks.A crisis of the worker-peasant alliance thus resulted, and dur-ing 1929 caused the Party (because of the way it analyzed thesituation) to abandon the NEP suddenly and completely. Thisabandonment took place, as we shall see, in conditions thatwere unfavorable to the functioning of the kolkhozes, fromwhich ensued, among other things, the very grave crisis ofagricultural production that marked the first half of the 1930s.

The fact that through 1928 and 1929 the emergency mea-sures continued to be enforced meant that these measurescould no longer be regarded as merely “emergency” mea-sures, as they had been described at the beginning of 1928.They became, on the contrary, “ordinary” measures. What washappening, in practice, was transition to a policy differentfrom the NEP, a transition which entailed a series of conse-quences.


(a) The chief economic effects of thesituation created by the procurementcrisis and the protracted application ofthe “emergency measures”

The procurement crisis and the protracted application of theemergency measures had negative repercussions on grainproduction, and then on agricultural production generally.These consequences proceeded from two types of sequence ofcause and effect. On the one hand, the technico-economic:when requisitioning deprived some peasants of even the grainthey needed for sowing, that led directly to a subsequent fallin production. On the other hand, ideological and political:when the peasants thought the amount of grain that wouldremain at their disposal depended not on what they producedbut on decisions to be taken by the administrative authorities,they were not disposed to increase their production. Recip-rocally, the fall in production and the economic consequencesof the application of the emergency measures had, in turn,political effects. At this level “economics turned into politics,”as Lenin had noted at the time of the peasant revolts in the lastphase of “war communism.” This transformation of economicsinto politics was the most serious result of the introductionand then renewal of the “emergency measures.”

(1) The fresh decline in grain production in1928, the renewal of the emergencymeasures in 1928–1929, and the declinein procurement

All the tensions provoked in the rural areas by the applica-tion of the emergency measures of 1928, and by the way inwhich they were applied, had a negative effect on grain pro-duction. In 1928 this production was down again as comparedwith 1927—it came to only 73.3 million metric tons.67 Ascompared with 1926, the decline in production was 3.1 millionmetric tons.

This fall in production entailed a tendency for procurementto fall. The Soviet government dealt with the situation by


continuing, as we know, to resort to emergency measures.However, under the combined effects of the decline in theharvest and the exhaustion of the peasants’ reserve stocks, theamount of grain procured now suffered a real collapse. It cameto no more than 8.3 million metric tons, or about 78.4 per-cent of the procurement obtained without emergency mea-sures in 1926–1927.68 This had important consequences forthe Soviet economy as a whole.

A particularly notable sign of the exhaustion of the peasants’reserve stocks was the sharp drop in the amount procured inthe first half of 1929. During those six months, the amountprocured came to no more than about 2.6 million metric tonsof grain (less than half the procurement achieved in the firsthalf of 1928).69 At the same time prices of grain on the privatemarkets reached new peaks.70

The severe fall in the quantity of grain held by the state andcooperative organs threatened more gravely than ever beforethe supplying of the towns and the regularity of exports.

There was something even worse: the impact of theemergency measures upon the peasantry was such that theirproduction effort declined again. Thus 1929 saw a fresh fall inthe grain harvest. It came to no more than 71.7 million metrictons.71 As compared with 1926, the reduction was 4.7 millionmetric tons. This decline was all the more catastrophic be-cause it occurred at a moment when the struggle for indus-trialization was in full swing and called, if it was to be carriedon without subjecting the economy as a whole to excessivetension, for an increasing supply of agricultural produce,primarily grain.

The emergency measures thus did not help really to over-come the initial difficulties. On the contrary, they contributedto disrupting the working of the NEP (in fact, they put an endto it) and broke the dynamism that Soviet agriculture hadshown until 1926–1927.

It was the collapse of the harvest and of the grain procure-ment in 1928 and 1929 (that is, one of the consequences of theprotracted implementation of the emergency measures) thatinduced the Bolshevik Party to go over to collectivization on a


vast scale at the end of 1929. The immediate aim of the “turn”thus made was to stop the decline in procurement. The “turn”took place in conditions where it was no longer possible torely on agricultural successes previously obtained, or on per-suasion of the peasants, and their enthusiasm. The large-scalecollectivization begun in the autumn of 1929 was thus carriedout essentially “from above,” by means of administrative mea-sures. It did indeed make possible imposition on the kol-khozes of relatively high delivery quotas, even when theirharvest had been poor, which was the case for several years.On the morrow of collectivization as thus carried out, from1931 on, the grain harvest often fell by 12 or 14 percent belowthe level of 1926. The maintenance and increase of the exac-tions from grain production were thereafter effected at theexpense of the peasants’ own consumption—but these factsalready belong to another period, that of the so-called revolu-tion from above.72

It will be observed that the measures taken in 1928 and 1929did not effect overall agricultural production as badly as theyaffected grain production. The reason for this was that theemergency measures hardly affected, directly at any rate,crops other than grain corps.73

The primordial importance ascribed by the Bolshevik Partyto the procurement problem was due to the decisive role thatthe “net grain balance” of agriculture played in the provision-ing of the town population and in maintaining exports.

(2) The problem of the grain balance

The most significant figure in this connection is that for the“net grain balance” from agriculture, meaning the net amountof grain definitively marketed outside the village. 74 Even in1926–1927 (that is, before the application of the emergencymeasures) this balance came to no more than 10.5 millionmetric tons, as compared with about 19 million metric tonsin 1913.75 The contraction of the net grain balance in compari-son with that before the war was bigger than the decline inproduction, although the peasantry had not quite recovered


their prewar standard consumption of grain (the rural popula-tion having increased).76

In general, however, 1926–1927 food consumption by themass of the peasantry had reached a level markedly higherthan in the years preceding the Revolution. The distributionof income among the peasants was much less unequal thanbefore, and a certain increase was observed in the intake perhead of products rich in protein (meat, milk, and eggs).77

In relation to prewar, the decline in the net grain balance ofagriculture gave rise to a series of grave problems. While thisbalance had fallen by about 44 percent between 1909–1913and 1926–1927,78 consumption by the towns and industry hadrisen by about 28 percent between 1913 and 1927. 79 Theresort to emergency measures did not bring about any im-provement in this aspect of the situation, for the grain balanceof agriculture declined in 1927–1928. It then stood at only8.33 million metric tons. In 1928–1929 the emergency mea-sures enabled the grain balance to be kept at the same level80

as in 1927–1928, despite the decline in the harvest, but thisresult was secured only by reducing consumption in the vil-lages, which had to bear the whole brunt of the fall in grainproduction.

A reduction in their consumption of grain had thus beenforced upon the peasants by means of the emergency mea-sures. Already in 1928 the application of these measures hadled to the peasant masses being deprived of some of the grainthey needed for subsistence and for sowing for the next sea-son. Stalin noted this in his report of July 13, 1928, to theplenum of the CC, when he said that it had proved necessaryto “press harder” on certain regions and to take from “thepeasants’ emergency stocks.”81

In the regions affected by such exactions, many peasantshad tried to obtain from the towns the grain that theyneeded.82 The distribution of grain in the towns was therebydisorganized. The urban population, fearing that its consumerneeds would not be met, tried to hoard, and this made itnecessary to introduce rationing in certain towns.83 The effectof this was to prevent the peasants from supplying themselves


from the shops. In some cases the Soviet administration waseven obliged to sell part of the grain procurement back to thepeasants.

Altogether, after 1927, the supply of food to both town andcountry worsened, and the amount of grain available for exportfell sharply—to such an extent that symptoms of crisis ap-peared also in the sphere of external trade.

(3) The procurement crisis and foreigntrade

The suddenness with which the emergency measures wereapplied was due above all to the fact that the Bolshevik Partywas poorly represented among the peasantry and its concreteknowledge of peasant and agricultural problems was very in-adequate. However, the rigidity shown in the application ofthese measures was due also to the seriousness of the impactwhich this decline in procurement had on Soviet foreigntrade.

The figures are self-explanatory: whereas in 1926–1927grain exports amounted to 2,160,000 metric tons (which wasonly 22.4 percent of the 1913 figure),84 in 1928 they fell to89,000 metric tons.85 And it needs to be added that this wasthe figure for gross exports. They were made possible only bydrawing on the State’s reserves, which fell to a level so lowthat the Soviet Union had to reconstitute its emergency stocksby importing grain itself in the summer of 1928—to theamount of 250,000 metric tons.86

A tremendous effort was therefore required in 1928 to makeup for the fall in the exports of grain. The results of this effortwere positive: the total value of exports increased, in spite ofeverything, by about 3.8 percent, reaching the figure of 799.5million roubles.87 This increase was achieved through a sub-stantial boosting of exports of oil, butter, eggs, timber, furs,etc.88 Only the centralization of exports by the Commissariatof Trade made such an effort feasible: and it was paid for bythe appearance of fresh shortages on the domestic market.

However, the launching of the industrialization program


(which was based on extensive reliance on imports of indus-trial goods from abroad) came up against difficulties as aresult of the poor progress in exports. The latter were notsufficient to secure the growing amount of imports needed.The Soviet Union, which had a surplus in its foreign tradebalance in 1926–1927, in 1928 showed a deficit of 153.1 mil-lion. If the emergency measures were renewed in 1929, thiswas done also in order to redress the foreign trade situation. Itwas decided, in fact, to increase grain exports, regardless ofthe fall in procurement: hence the aggravated shortages.

The procurement crisis thus came into violent contradic-tion with the demands of the industrial plan. This is theprincipal economic aspect of the crisis at the end of the 1920s.It is an aspect which cannot be separated from the form ofindustrialization policy which was developed at that time.

The political consequences of the procurement crisis and ofthe measures taken to cope with it were closely interwovenwith the “economic” consequences. They conditioned eachother. For the future of the worker-peasant alliance, and so forthe form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the politicalconsequences were of decisive importance. They were at theheart of the overall process of the class struggles of this period.It is these consequences that we must now study.

(b) The principal effects on class relationsin the countryside of the situationcreated by the procurement crisis andthe protracted application of theemergency measures

The political consequences for the worker-peasant allianceof the situation which developed after January 1928 were, ofcourse, complex and contradictory. The statements made atthe time by the Party leaders, and what appeared in the press,reflect these contradictions. At certain moments stress was laidon the increased influence of the Party among the peasantmasses which was supposed to have resulted from the opera-tion of the emergency measures. At other moments, mention


was made of the negative effect of these measures, which weresaid to have enabled the kulaks to rally broad sections of thepeasantry around them. Stalin’s writings also reveal divergentappreciations, reflecting both the contradictions in the objec-tive situation and the effects of the struggles going on withinthe Party leadership.

(1) Some formulations by Stalin regardingthe consequences of the application ofthe emergency measures during the firsthalf of 1928

During the plenum of April 1928 Stalin emphasized thestrengthening of the Party’s leading role which was supposedto have resulted from the application of the emergency mea-sures. After declaring that these measures had “enabled us toput an end to the procurement crisis” (which was soon to beproved untrue) and to render the local Party organizationsmore or less sound by purging them of “blatantly corruptelements who refuse to recognize the existence of classes inthe countryside,” he added: “We have improved our work inthe countryside, we have brought the poor peasants closer tous and won the allegiance of the overwhelming majority of themiddle peasants, we have isolated the kulaks and have some-what offended the well-to-do top stratum of the middle peas-ants.” 89

We know, however, that in practice the emergency mea-sures were far from having affected only the kulaks. Indeed, asearly as February 1928 Stalin had sent out a circular warningthe Party’s local organizations against “excesses,” affectingstrata of the peasantry other than the rich peasants, whichmight “create new difficulties”90 with these other strata.

At the beginning of the summer of 1928, while remaining infavor of the emergency measures—which he thought wereimpossible to renounce—Stalin took a much more pessimisticview of the situation developing in the countryside, from thestandpoint of the political and ideological relations betweenclasses. This found expression in his statements of July 1928,


particularly his report to the Leningrad Party organization onthe results of the plenum held at the beginning of that month.In this report Stalin acknowledged that the procurement crisishad not ended in March, and that in April-June it had beennecessary to extend the emergency measures to the point oftaking from the emergency stocks held by the peasants, with,as the result, “renewed recourse to emergency measures, thearbitrary administrative measures, the infringements of revo-lutionary law, the house-to-house visitations, the unlawfulsearches and so on . . .” Having described these measuresand the form they had taken, Stalin added that they had “wors-ened the political situation in the country and created a threatto the bond (between the workers and the peasants).” 91 Deal-ing with the same problem, the resolution adopted by the July1928 plenum noted the “discontent among certain strata of thepeasantry, expressed in demonstrations against the arbitraryadministrative measures adopted in a number of regions.”92

Nine months later, to be sure, at the plenum of April 1929,when Stalin attacked Bukharin for the first time before theCC,93 he again spoke of the need to resort to emergencymeasures, asserting that these measures were “backed by thepopular support of the middle- and poor-peasant masses,” 94 aclaim that was not confirmed by the actual way in whichprocurement was carried out in the months that followed.

Thus, Stalin’s appreciations of the class consequences of theemergency measures varied a great deal. They do not enableus to discover the answer to the real question: what was theprincipal aspect of the contradictory effects of these measures?

In order to answer this question we need to take an overallview of the situation in the countryside.

(2) An overall view of the situation in thecountryside in 1928

When we take this overall view we see clearly that whatconstitutes the principal aspect of the situation is the worsen-ing in the relations between the Soviet government and thepeasantry during 1928, a worsening that involved a large pro-


portion of the middle peasants and even some of the poorpeasants (those who were affected, directly or indirectly, bythe emergency measures).

The symptoms of this worsening situation were undeniable:for example, the contraction in the sown area and in thenumber of cattle. The latter was due not merely to the shortageof fodder (due to the extent of the emergency measures) butalso to the fear felt by some of the middle peasants lest they beregarded as rich peasants.95 More broadly, the confidence ofmany peasants in the continuance of the NEP was shaken:they no longer believed in a secure future, and were alsoplaced in an objectively difficult position through the less andless adequate supply of means of production. The climate ofuncertainty developing among the peasantry was also con-nected with the closure by administrative means of thousandsof small-scale enterprises, while the production and distribu-tion previously provided by these enterprises was not re-placed by state and cooperative industry and trade.

The reduction in the number of livestock, which led to acrisis in the supply of milk, butter, and meat, added to thegrain crisis.96

It was especially during the farming season of 1928–1929that relations between the Soviet government and broad strataof the peasantry deteriorated. On top of the measures taken atthe beginning of 1928 came other measures of a fiscal charac-ter. Henceforth a section of the peasantry were to be taxed nolonger on the basis of norms fixed in advance (according to theprinciples adopted at the beginning of the NEP) but on “indi-vidual bases” estimated by the agents of the revenue author-ity. In theory, taxes levied in this way were to affect only therichest of the peasants. Actually, they also affected the middlepeasants to a large extent, for a number of reasons: lack of astrict definition of the peasants who were to be taxed in thisway; lack of familiarity with rural realities on the part of therevenue service; and opportunity (given these conditions) forsome of the kulaks to hide themselves, so that the burden oftaxation fell upon peasants who ought not to have been taxedin this way; etc.


After November 1928 Stalin mentioned mistakes made inthe application of the “individual tax.” He said that only 2 or 3percent of peasant households should have been affected byit, whereas there were several districts “where 10, 12 andeven more percent of the households are taxed, with the resultthat the middle section of the peasantry is affected.” 97

Following a wave of protests from the rural population,some of the peasants who had been wrongly taxed got theirmoney back. Nevertheless, considerable harm had been doneto the relations between the Soviet government and the mid-dle peasants. Thereafter, some of the latter tended to line upwith the rich peasants for joint resistance to administrativedecision. Furthermore, the economic weakening of the middlepeasants increased their dependence on the kulaks.

In this situation, toward the end of 1928 the TsIK adoptedan important decision regarding the “general principles of thepossession and distribution of land.” 98 This legislative textmade serious changes in the Agrarian Code of 1922 99 whichwere significant from two points of view: they facilitated tran-sition to collective forms of agricultural work and production,and they restricted the possibility of land-grabbing by thekulaks.

However, the arrangements made in it regarding the gen-eral peasant assembly in the village (the skhod) showed thatthe Soviet government was obliged to cut down the powers ofthis assembly and to subject it to control by the administrativeorgans. Thereafter, decisions taken by the skhod, in which themiddle peasants held the majority, could be annulled by therural soviet, in which these peasants were increasingly re-duced to minority status.

Politically, this measure meant a decisive break with theNEP, which had accepted the middle peasant as the centralfigure in the Soviet countryside. It showed that there had beena rupture between the middle peasants and the government,since it took away from these peasants the power of autono-mous decision hitherto allowed them within the framework ofthe skhod. This change of direction implied a profound wors-ening in the relations of confidence which the NEP had


begun to establish between the Soviet government and themiddle peasantry. It showed that there was a divergence be-tween the orientations of the latter (who had been to someextent thrust into the camp of the rich peasants) and those ofthe former. And, however justified some of the new orienta-tions of the Soviet government might be, the introduction ofmeans of constraint which were to be used to bend the will ofthe basic mass of the peasantry could not but result in gravepolitical crises. Let us recall that only a little over two yearsbefore the adoption of the decision subjecting the skhod totutelage—and this decision was to be one of the instruments ofwhat has been called the “revolution from above,” that is, of a collec-tivization not decided upon by the peasant massesthemselves—Stalin, referring to Lenin, had said: “For carry-ing out a revolution it is not enough to have a correct Partyline. . . . For carrying out a revolution a further circumstanceis required, namely, that the masses, the broad mass of theworkers, shall have been convinced through their own experi-ence that the Party’s line is correct.”100

As Lenin had forecast six years earlier,101 evoking circum-stances similar to those of 1928, the weakening of the worker-peasant alliance was splitting the Party more and more into atendency which was determined to “go ahead” even if thepeasantry was not satisfied, and one which sought to preventthe rupture of the worker-peasant alliance.

The supporters of the first tendency, who were led by Stalin,were convinced that only rapid industrialization and collec-tivization would enable the difficulties to be overcome byproviding the worker-peasant alliance with a new materialfoundation (one of “steel,” that is, of tractors) and unifying thetechnological conditions of production by introducingmachinery into agriculture.

It was, of course, the representatives of the other tendency(described as “the Right” and led by Bukharin) who gave mostattention to the weakening of the worker-peasant alliance andto the way in which the fight against the kulaks was beingtransformed into a fight against the middle peasants.102 How-ever, representatives of the first tendency were themselves


obliged to acknowledge the increased political and ideologi-cal influence of the kulaks over the middle peasants and themanifestations of discontent on the part of the latter. This wastrue of Kaganovich, although he advocated a “hard” line as theonly way of ensuring the industrialization of the Soviet Union.In a statement made in 1928 he said that “the serednyak issometimes influenced by the kulak and expresses his dissatis-faction. . . . [He has been hit] by rather heavy taxation, andby our inability at the present time to offer him prices for hisgrain which are commensurate with the prices of manufac-tured goods.” In the process of taking action against thekulaks, he admitted, “we have penalized” the middle peas-ants.103

The procurement campaign of 1928–1929 began badly.From October on, pressure by the procurement organs wasagain brought to bear over a very wide area. Pravda of De-cember 2, 1928, denounced the pressure and harsh measuresthat were being applied to the middle and poor peasants. Theattempts made to organize them had had little success, andthese two classes did not constitute a force upon which theParty could really rely in the countryside. At the same time,the poor peasants were also becoming more and more discon-tented because of the increasing gap between the prices paidby the state (even though these had been raised a little afterJuly 1928) and the prices prevailing on the free market (whichwere now three or four times as high).104

Under these conditions, since there was no solid organiza-tion or political consciousness of a sufficiently high levelamong the peasantry, part of the harvest was marketed out-side the official channels, not only by the kulaks but also bythe poor and middle peasants (who were able, through thesesales, to retain a certain degree of economic strength in rela-tion to the kulaks.) Although sales on the “free market” werenot, as a rule, actually forbidden, the local authorities oftenpenalized them, so as to facilitate their own procurementplans. The penalties affected the middle and poor peasants aswell as the kulaks, and their discontent consequently in-creased.


(3) The peasants’ resistance in 1929 and thedevelopment of coercive measures

At the beginning of 1929 there were many signs that apeasant resistance was developing against procurement mea-sures that were being imposed with ever greater severity.From January 1929 on the Soviet press mentioned more andmore often additional “categories” of peasants who were act-ing as enemies of the Soviet power. The press spoke of “littlekulaks” (kulachniki), who “dance to the tune of the kulaks,”and “sub-kulaks (podkulachniki) who carry out sabotage ontheir behalf.”105 These expressions did not relate tosocioeconomic categories but to ideological ones. Their ap-pearance reflected a reality: the growing influence of thekulaks over the poor and middle peasants whose direct inter-ests were being harmed. They reflected also an attitude ofmistrust toward the peasantry in general which was wide-spread in the Party.106

This attitude toward wide sections of the peasant masseswas in line with the way that the local authorities interpretedthe directives they received from the center. In any case, itweakened still further the worker-peasant alliance, andhelped to cause a growing proportion of the peasantry to fallunder the ideological and political influence of the kulaks.

In his speech at the Party’s Sixteenth Conference (at the endof April 1929), Syrtsov, chairman of the Sovnarkom of theRSFSR, who supported the line of maintaining and extendingthe emergency measures, or other similar measures, describedhow the relation of forces was evolving in the countryside:“We can literally feel, sense, how things are taking a certainshape, how the kulaks are becoming conscious of themselvesas a class, how their own class demands are being put for-ward.”107

The counteroffensive thus being waged by the kulaks wasobviously possible only because they had succeeded (as aresult of the situation which had developed after the begin-ning of 1928) in drawing behind them a sufficient body ofpeasant support. One of the resolutions adopted by the Six-


teenth Conference, while not recognizing that the worker-peasant alliance had been gravely shaken, nevertheless raisedthe problem of maintaining this alliance: “The questionwhether the peasant masses will remain faithful to the alliancewith the working class, or will allow the bourgeoisie to sepa-rate them from it, depends on the line of development thatagriculture is to take—the socialist road or the capitalistroad—and, in conformity with that, on who is going to directthe way the economy will develop—the kulak or the socialiststate.”108

It is significant that the problem thus presented was notexpressed in terms of a mass line to be carried out among thepeasantry, a task of ideological and political work aimed atpersuading the peasants of the correctness of the socialistroad: that it was expressed not in political terms (the leadingrole of the Party and of the proletariat in relation to thepeasantry), but in “economic” terms, in terms of the directionof the economy by the “state.” Actually, this “direction of theeconomy by the State” was assumed to be dependent essen-tially on the accelerated development of industry. The Six-teenth Party Conference adopted the figures for the FirstFive-Year Plan which were put before it. The future industrialresults of that plan appeared as the condition required fortransforming agrarian relations through the spread of collec-tive and state farms, so that the spread of this type of farmingwas still treated very cautiously by the Sixteenth Confer-ence;109 but the immediate political requirements forstrengthening the worker-peasant alliance were neglected,owing to the de facto priority accorded to industrializationseen as the condition for this strengthening.

The priority development of industry (and, above all, of heavy industry) at all costs was at that time regarded as thefundamental task of the hour. This resulted from the conjunc-tion of a number of factors which will be examined later.Among them was the shortage of industrial goods (interpretedas the symptom of a “lag” of industry behind agriculture) andan increase in unemployment, for which rapid industrializa-tion seemed the only answer. On the political plane, acceler-


ated industrialization was seen as a means of consolidating thedictatorship of the proletariat through increasing the numbersof the working class, and also through the strengthening of thecountry’s military potential which this industrial developmentwould make possible.

The importance ascribed one-sidedly to the development ofindustry, and heavy industry in particular, led to little accountbeing taken of the negative consequences of the postpone-ment (until industry should be “sufficiently developed”) ofthe solving of the problems involved in the consolidation ofthe worker-peasant alliance. Within the framework of the pre-vailing interpretation of the basic task of the hour, the wors-ened situation in the countryside, far from impelling the Partyto rectify the political line which had brought this about, ledon the contrary to the adoption of fresh measures of coercion,applied, in practice, to the peasantry as a whole; these wereconsidered necessary for the rapid industrialization of theSoviet Union.

The most serious indication of the worsening situation inthe countryside was the sharp fall in the procurement of grainduring the first half of 1929.110

Faced with this fall, the Party and the government tried toapply measures of a new type, so as to have as little recourse aspossible to Article 107,111 since they had promised this to thepeasants after the many protests and demonstrations in 1928.One of these measures took the form of a “voluntary undertak-ing,” a sort of “self-fixing” by the skhod itself of the amount ofgrain to be procured.

Actually, the skhod (which, moreover, was often called uponto commit itself without regard to whether or not a quorum ofmembers was present) was confronted with the obligation toratify the procurement figure laid down by the state organs. Adecision taken in July 1929 by the CC shows plainly that thequantities which the village assemblies thus “undertook” todeliver were taken in excess of their capacity and had to bereduced. This exposes the fictitious nature of the so-calledself-fixing of the amount of the grain procurement. The use ofsuch methods proved a new source of discontent among the


peasantry, including the poor peasants to whom these mea-sures were applied, and who, moreover, were supposed tohave been consulted through “poor peasants’ committees”which actually had no real existence, and often disappearedalmost as soon as they had been formed.112

The most serious source of the increased tension between alarge part of the peasantry and the Soviet government wasconstituted, however, by the measures taken against peasantswho failed to deliver to the procurement organs the amountsof grain laid down. These peasants were subjected to variouspenalties. One of these penalties was expulsion from thecooperative society, which meant that those expelled had tobuy on the private market, where prices were much higherthan in the cooperative shops. The effect of this was to obligethese peasants also to sell their produce on the private mar-ket, thereby risking prosecution as speculators. Another pen-alty applied when the amounts laid down were not deliveredas the imposition of a fine equivalent to five times theamount not delivered, known as the pyatikratka. In principle,the application of this fine was to be decided by the skhod,but, in view of its frequent refusal to do so, in April 1929power to apply the fine was given to the rural soviet—whichmeant, in practice, to an organ in which the peasants carriedlittle weight and which was dominated by officials.

In June 1929 the government of the RSFSR decided, fur-thermore, to expand the applicability of Article 61 of the PenalCode. Henceforth, “refusal to deliver grain in fulfillment ofthe voluntary undertaking entered into by the village, a jointrefusal by a group of rural households, and offering resistanceto the implementation of the plan for building up reserves ofgrain [will be dealt with] in accordance with part three of thisarticle.”

This part of Article 61 provided for penalties of up to twoyears’ imprisonment, confiscation of property and, in somecases, exile. Exiling and imprisonment, which had alreadybegun to be employed as penalties, were thus made legal.During the campaign of 1929–1930, these measures wereapplied with increasing frequency.113 This was also true of


the “hard tax,” which meant to impose upon kulaks, or peas-ants treated as kulaks, a contribution in grain to be paid withintwenty-four hours. Since the rate at which this tax was leviedoften exceeded what the peasants could pay, they could findthemselves sent into exile for failure to meet their obligation.

The application of Article 61 did not affect the kulaks alone,but often struck at the middle peasants. This was so also withthe decision taken by the CC in July 1929 to forbid the sale bystate shops of “goods in short supply” (matches, lamp oil,nails, textiles, etc.) to peasants who had not delivered theamounts of grain laid down for procurement. 114 A measurealready practiced at the local level, and at first condemned asunjustified, was now given legal force.

The local authorities were supposed to apply the variouspenalties with discrimination, that is, to avoid hurting themiddle and poor peasants, except in exceptional cases. Inreality, as shown by the many decisions by the CC condemn-ing the abuses committed by local authorities this was not so.

The Party leadership tried to draw a distinction between theline laid down, the correctness of which they reaffirmed, andits application, which they recognized as often being mis-taken. In principle, this distinction would be justified if theformulation of the line and the demands imposed upon thelocal authorities had not led the latter to multiply decisionswhich were unacceptable owing to their class consequences(and which were, moreover, condemned post facto). Such de-cisions became more and more frequent during 1928 and1929, so that the situation grew increasingly to resemble whatLenin had described and denounced in March 1919, when hesaid that “blows which were intended for the kulaks veryfrequently fell on the middle peasants. In this respect we havesinned a great deal.”115

During 1929 the peasants’ resistance to the various coerciveand penal measures developed and took many different forms.It was no longer merely a matter of “passive resistance,”expressed in reduction of the sown area and slaughtering ofsome of the cattle, but of “offensive” reactions of one kind oranother. One of these forms of resistance, which implied col-


lective action, was called volynka: certain villages simply re-fused to supply anything whatsoever to the procurement or-gans. These volynki were punished severely. In 1929 peasantrevolts were reported in a number of regions (but do notappear to have spread widely). The most important of themoccurred in the mountains of Georgia (in Adzharia) and in thePskov region. There were also attacks on procurement agentsby kulaks or peasants under kulak influence.116

When the Party leadership drew up the balance sheet of theprocurement campaign of 1928–1929 at the beginning of July 1929, they came to the conclusion that the measures whichhad been taken down to that time were not providing a realsolution to the problem of supplying the towns, and not en-abling a sufficient quantity of grain to be centralized for ex-port. From then on, the leading bodies of the Party, especiallythe general secretary’s office, were led to reformulate theproblem of collectivization.

Previously, this problem had been regarded as one to betackled with care—as a task which it was essential to carry outwith wide backing and confidence on the part of the peasantmasses. Thereafter, collectivization tended to appear as theimmediate means of “solving” the problems created by pro-curement difficulties and by the fall in grain production.

As we shall see,117 the Party then committed itself to apolicy of accelerated collectivization for which neither it northe peasant masses were ideologically or politically prepared.This policy was carried out in such a way that it proved thestarting point of a serious rupture in the worker-peasant al-liance and an unprecedented crisis in agriculture, especiallygrain production and stock-breeding. The supply of foodstuffsto the towns could then be ensured only through a further fallin consumption by the peasantry.

Notes

1. Let me remind the reader that the expression “during the NEP”means the period from 1921 to 1929. I have already pointed out


that the policy actually carried out during the last years of thisperiod amounted increasingly to a negation of the principles ofthe NEP. The expression “final crisis,” or “general crisis,” ofthe NEP therefore does not really mean a crisis of the “NewEconomic Policy” so much as the development of the contradic-tions characteristic of the years 1928 and 1929.

2. Narodnoye khozyaistvo 1961 g., p. 27.3. Sdvigi v selskom khozyaistve SSSR, p. 14.4. The figures for this development will be found in Grosskopf,

L’Alliance ouvrière, Table 185, p. 310.5. Ibid., p. 311.6. Report of the 15th Congress of the CPSU., Communist Party of

Great Britain, London, 1928, p. 362.7. See volume I of the present book, pp. 235 ff.8. See above, p. 92.9. “Preliminary draft theses on the agrarian question, for the 2nd

Comintern Congress,” in Lenin, CW, vol. 31, pp. 152–164.10. S. G. Strumilin, “Rassloeniye sovyetskoy derevni,” in

Planovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 3 (1928), p. 56, quoted in Grosskopf,L’Alliance ouvrière Grosskopf’s book, which the reader interested in adetailed analysis of the problems discussed here should con-sult. Strumilin’s article is available in French in Recherchesinternationales à la lumière du marxisme, no. 85 (no. 4 of 1975),pp. 120 ff.

11. The approximate character of the figures is due especially to thefact that the majority of the investigators whose work furnishedthe basis for these statistics were not peasants themselves andwere therefore not always able to grasp precisely the real situa-tion of the different forms. Nevertheless, it is to be observedthat quite other sources give a social breakdown of the peas-antry very similar to Strumilin’s, when these sources employthe same criteria of categorization as he does (see Strumilin’sarticle in Recherches internationales, no. 85 [no. 4 of 1975], p.149, and Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, tables on pp. 309–310).It is to be observed, too, that Strumilin, who cannot be accusedof being “pro-kulak”, considers that the farms of the richerpeasants were more strictly inspected than the others and theirincomes therefore better known (Recherches internationales,p. 130).

12. These figures refer to the share contributed by peasant farms(i.e., excluding the sovkhozes and kolkhozes) in 1925. Even if


we set aside the share of marketed grain furnished by the well-to-do stratum of the middle peasants, the other middle peasantsand the poor peasants alone were responsible for 71.5 percent ofit (see Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 142). We are con-cerned here still with comparative quantities, but they arehighly significant. These same quantities were mentioned byStalin in May 1928 (see above, pp. 89–90).

13. Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, pp. 142–144.14. See above, pp. 95 ff.15. Figures for the area of land included in a farm do not permit any

conclusion to be drawn regarding the wealth of the farmer, asLenin showed in The Development of Capitalism in Russia(CW, volume 3). What had been true before the Revolution waseven truer under the NEP. At that time an especially largeproportion of the land held by the poor and middle peasantscould not be cultivated by them, for lack of tools, machinery,and horses (for some figures, see above, pp. 97–98).

16. L. Kamenev, Nashi dostizheniya, trudnosti i perspektivy, p. 9.See also L. Kamenev, Stati i rechi, vol. XII (Moscow, 1926), pp.347–371 (quoted in Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, pp. 138–140).

17. Ya. A. Yakovlev, Oboshibkakh khlebofurazhnogo balansa TsSU iego istolkovatelei, quoted in Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p.142.

18. Stalin, “On the Grain Front,” in Works, vol. 11, pp. 85 ff. Thepercentages (given on p. 89) were furnished by Nemchinov, amember of the collegium of the Central Statistical Board.

19. The special influence of the rich peasants in the skhod, andtheir attachment to the “land commune” have been questioned:see D. J. Male, Russian Peasant Organisation Before Collec-tivization, pp. 162 ff.

20. Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, pp. 137 ff.21. See above, pp. 36–37.22. Ibid.23. G. Pistrak, “Zernovoye khozyaistovo i khlebniy rynok S.S.S.R.

vosstanovitelnogo perioda,” in Sotsialistichestoye Khozyaistvo,no. 5-6 (1927), p. 256. Also Ya. A. Yakovlev, ed., K Doprosu osotsialisticheskom pereustroistve selskogo khozyaistva, pp.98–103, 153–155, quoted in Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, pp.331 ff.

24. This is confirmed by the way that the emergency measures were


applied subsequently. They made possible the procurement ofthe required amount of grain only through taking large-scalelevies from the reserves held by the middle peasants, and some-times by the poor peasants. This fact was admitted more thanonce by the Party leadership—see above, pp. 39–40 ff.

25. V. Milyutin, “Uroki khlebozagotovok,” in Na Agrarnom Fronte,no. 4 (1928), p. vi, and A. Lvov, “Itogi khlebozagotovitelnoykampanii 1927–1928 g.,” in ibid., no. 9 (1928), pp. 65–66; quotedin Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 333.

26. In this connection, although grain production increased consid-erably under NEP, the remark made by Lenin at the TenthParty Conference in May 1921 (CW, vol. 32, p. 406) was stillvalid for the great majority of the peasants: in the absence of anadequate supply of industrial products to offer to the peasants,then only taxation would ensure the supply of foodstuffs inamounts adequate to meet the needs of the towns, industry, andexports. Most of the peasants were too poor, and their need ofgrain for their own consumption too poorly satisfied, to be ableto sell their produce in order to hoard, or to invest, say, bysubscribing to loans.

27. Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 332.28. It should be recalled that in the summer and autumn of 1918 the

Bolshevik Party supported, in principle, the movement andorganization of the poor peasants (see volume I, p. 220). What-ever may have been the weaknesses of that movement (whichdeveloped during the civil war), it is significant that during theyears 1921–1927 the Party offered no systematic backing to thevarious initiatives of the poor peasants.

29. In 1926–1927 average annual income per head (i.e., permember of a family) was estimated at 78.6 roubles for the poorpeasants, 113.3 roubles for the middle peasants, and 239.9 rou-bles for the rich peasants. That of an agricultural worker wasestimated at 108.2 roubles and that of an industrial worker at

be stressed that these are only estimates, and that the “purchas-ing power” of the rouble varied widely from one locality orregion to another.

30. See volume I of the present work, p. 239.31. Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, pp. 239–246.32. Ibid., p. 177.33. See below, p. 142.

334.6 roubles (Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 211). It must


34. Yakovlev, ed., K voprosu, p. 59, quoted in Grosskopf, L’Allianceouvrière, p. 308.

35. N. Rosnitsky, Litso derevni, pp. 28–29, quoted in Grosskopf,L’Alliance ouvrière, pp. 308–309.

36. Yakovlev, ed., K voprosu, pp. 56–57.37. Lenin, “Resolution on the attitude to the middle peasants”

(March 1919), in CW, vol. 29, p. 219.38. Lenin, “On the Tax in Kind” (April 9, 1921), vol. 32, p. 292.39. Ibid., p. 288.40. Report of the 15th Congress, p. 376.41. Grosskopf quotes numerous facts concerning the development

of these forms of association and mutual aid (L’Alliance ouv-rière, pp. 311–315).

42. Ibid., pp. 311–312.43. Report of the 15th Congress, pp. 368-369.44. On these points see Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, pp. 390–

395.45. Ibid., pp. 311 ff., 415 ff.46. See above, pp. 121 ff.47. See above., p. 97.48. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, part 2, p. 977, and

Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, Table 141, p. 244.49. See above, pp. 106–107.50. Report of the 15th Congress, p. 368.51. A great deal of weight needs to be given to the problem referred

to here. It was, in fact, underestimation of the potentialities thatthe farms of the poor and middle peasants possessed for severalyears yet that contributed to impelling the Soviet government toundertake a collectivization that was ill-prepared politically andideologically, and which it saw as the only way of escape fromthe supposed exhaustion of the possibility of still increasingagricultural production for a certain period without resort to animprovised revolution in agrarian structures. It should be notedthat the thesis of “exhaustion of possibilities for growth in ag-riculture” in the conditions of 1928 was explicitly affirmed atthat time (see the resolution adopted on July 10, 1928, by theplenum of the CC, in K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 391ff.), and that it is still defended in the Soviet Union. Chapters IXand X of V. Yakovtsevsky, Agrarnye otnosheniya v periodestroitelstva sotsializma. A French translation of these chaptersappeared in Recherches internationales, no. 85 (no. 4 of 1975),


pp. 55 ff. On the theses of the “exhaustion” of NEP agricultureand the urgent “economic necessity” of collectivization, see pp.56–59.

52. Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 238 ff., 377.53. I. B. Messner, “Predposylki planovogo razvitiya mekhanizatsii

selskogo khozyaistva,” in Planovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 8 (1927),p. 54.

54. M. P. Oganovsky, “Maksimalny variant perspektivnogo planarekonstruktsii selskogo khozyaistva,” in PlanovoyeKhozyaistvo, no. 7 (1927), p. 37, quoted in Grosskopf, L’Al-liance ouvrière, p. 377.

55. The concept of the “net balance” is explained below.56. Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, pp. 113, 122.57. Osvok’s forecasts are quoted from ibid., p. 351. The cultivated

areas, yields and marketable shares have been calculated fromthe same source. Actually, increases in yield are usually accom-panied by a more than proportionate increase in the share ofproduction marketed.

58. Report of the 15th Congress, p. 376.59. Ibid., p. 365.60. See volume I of the present book, p. 487 ff., especially p. 488.

On this point see also Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, pp. 156–159.

61. Report of the 15th Congress, p. 372.62. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, pp. 666–667, 851.63. Lenin, “The Tax in Kind” (April 21, 1921), in CW, vol. 32, p.

349.64. Yakovlev, ed., K voprosu, pp. 175, 184, 255, 284.65. Ibid., pp. 212–213, 222–224, 236, 256, and the remarks of

Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, pp. 292–295.66. Yakovlev, ed., K voprosu, pp. 59, 236–237; Rosnitsky, Litso

derevni, pp. 70–74; N. Baryshev, “Novye zavoyenvaniya dere-venskoy bednoty,” in Na Agrarnom Fronte, no. 9 (1928), p. 75.

67. A. Nove, An Economic History of the U.S.S.R., p. 186.68. A. Mendelson, ed., Pokazateli konyunkturi narodnogo

khozyaistva SSSR za 1923–1924–1928–1929 gg., p. 51.69. Ibid.70. Planovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 5 (1929), pp. 61-65; and no. 10, p.

94.71. A. Nove, Economic History, p. 186.72. M. Lewin, “Taking Grain: Soviet Policies of Agricultural Pro-


curement before the War,” in C. Abramsky and Beryl G.Williams, eds., Essays in Honour of E. H. Carr.

73. According to the estimates published by Gosplan in 1929 and1931, the index of agricultural production (with 1927–1928 as100) reached its maximum in 1926–1927 (with 101.1, in prices ofthat year), and fell to 90.3 in 1930 (Zaleski, Planning, p. 387).According to Narodnoye Khozyaistvo 1958 g., p. 350, agricul-tural production touched bottom in 1933 (when it was 18.5percent lower than in 1928). However, the Gosplan estimatespublished in Sotsialisticheskoye Stroitelstvo SSSR (1936), pp.232–233, and Zaleski’s calculations (Planning), show the lowestlevel of agricultural production as being reached in 1932, whenit was 15.6 percent less than in 1926–1927. The NEP level ofagricultural production was not to be regularly surpassed untilafter the Second World War, after 1948 (and for products ofanimal husbandry, not until 1953). See Narodnoye Khozyaistvo1958 g., p. 350.

74. This net balance might in some cases be less than the amount ofthe procurement, in particular when part of the grain procuredhad to be returned to villages or agricultural regions that had agrain deficit. It must not be confused with the total amount ofthe grain harvest that was marketed, as this figure includedsales made inside the village. The question of the net agricul-tural “surplus” is dealt with later (see below, p. 157).

75. See the figures given in Materialy osobogo soveshchaniya povosproizvodstvu osnovnogo kapitala pri prezidiume V.S.N.Kh.,seriya III, vypusk II: perspektivy razvitiya selskogokhozyaistva, p. 86, quoted in Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p.346.

76. Between 1913 and 1926–1927 the rural population had risenfrom 114.6 to 120.7 million, an increase of 5.3 percent (Narod-noye Khozyaistvo 1958 g., p. 9).

77. A. E. Lositsky, “Perspektivy potrebleniya prodovolstvennykhproduktov v Soyuze,” in Planovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 4 (1927),pp. 89–90, quoted in Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, pp. 170,174.

78. Calculated from the source given in note 15.79. Calculated from figures in Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p.

351.80. Kontrolnye tsifry 1929–1930 gg., p. 538.81. Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p. 215.


82. K. Bryukhanov, “Itogi khlebnoy kampanii 1928–1929g.,” inEkonomicheskoye Obozreniye, XI, p. 134, quoted in Grosskopf,L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 337.

83. Ibid. See also O. Narkiewicz, “Soviet Administration and theGrain Crisis of 1927–1928,” in Soviet Studies (October 1968),pp. 237 ff.

84. This reduction in exports as compared with prewar was due tothe increased standard of consumption of the masses.

85. Narodnoye Khozyaistvo (1932), p. xlviii.86. Mikoyan, in Bolshevik, no. 15 (1928), p. 16.87. Value in current prices (Narodnoye Khozyaistvo [1932], p.

xlviii).88. P. G. Timofeyev, Ekonomicheskaya geograf ya SSSR, p. 263,

quoted in Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 340.89. Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p. 51.90. Ibid., vol. 11, p. 1991. Ibid, vol. 11, p. 215.92. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 395.93. The struggles within the Party will be discussed in Part 4.94. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, p. 65.95. Wolf in Planovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 2 (1929), pp. 99-100; and

Vishnesky in Na Agrarnom Fronte, no. 10 (1928).96. Between 1928 and 1929 the number of cattle fell by nearly 1.7

million, to 68 million, and that of pigs by nearly 5 million, tounder 21 million (Kontrolnye tsifry 1929–1930 gg., pp. 530531).

97. Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p . 275.98. “Obshchiye nachala zemlepolzovaniya i zemleustroistva,” in

Kollektivizatsiya Sotsialisticheskogo Khozyaistva, doc. no. 20;quoted in Lewin, Russian Peasants, p. 283

99. See volume I of the present work, pp. 235 ff.100. Stalin’s report, November 1, 1926, to the Fifteenth Party Con-

ference, in Works, vol. 8, p. 296.101. When he wrote: “Our Party relies on two classes and therefore

its instability would be possible and its downfall inevitable ifthere were no agreement between those two classes” (Lenin,CW, vol. 36, p. 594; on this point see p. 323 of volume I of thepresent work).

102. Lewin, Russian Peasants, pp. 284, 372 ff.103. Ibid., pp. 285–286. Lewin quotes from Bolshevik, no. 19 (1928),

pp. 20, 26.


104. Ibid., p. 287.105. Pravda, January 26, 1929; Na Agrarnom Fronte, no. 7 (1929).

See also Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 1, pp. 258–259.

106. This mistrust went back a long way. It was expressed also incertain statements by Stalin at various periods before the crisisof 1928–1929 (see below, pp. 560–561).

107. Shestnadtsataya Konferentsiya VKP(b) (1962), p. 320, quoted inCarr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 1, pp. 256–257.

108. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 456–457.109. See below, pp. 455 ff.110. See above, pp. 109 ff.111. See above, p. 38.112. A. L. Angarov, Klassovaya borba v sovetskoy derevne, pp. 20 ff.,

and Lewin, Russian Peasants, pp. 390 ff.113. Lewin, Russian Peasants, pp. 389–390; The Penal Code of the

R.S.F.S.R. (text of 1926, with amendments up to December 1,1932).

114. Kollektivizatsiya Sotsialistcheskogo Khozyaistva, doc. no. 49.115.116. Lewin, Russian Peasants, p. 393.117. See below, p. 458.

Lenin, CW, vol. 29, p. 159.

135

2. The economic and social conditionsgoverning the reproduction andtransformation of production relationsin agriculture during the NEP

Once “war communism” had been abandoned, the trans-formation into commodities of a large part of agricultural pro-duction, together with the peasants’ need to buy on the marketnearly all their implements and a large proportion of the con-sumer goods they required, had the effect of causing the re-production of production relations in agriculture to dependheavily upon the conditions governing the circulation ofcommodities.

Under the NEP the system of production for the market andthe supply of goods to the rural areas, and particularly therelative levels of agricultural and industrial prices, were there-fore to exert a far-reaching influence on the reproduction andtransformation of production relations in agriculture. Theyaffected the structure of production and brought about a seriesof class consequences, weakening or strengthening differen-tially the various strata of the peasantry and categories ofproducers. The systems of production for the market, of saleand purchase, together with industrial and agricultural prices,constituted a totality of social relations the characteristics andtransformations of which were, for their part, subject to theoverall effects of the class struggles in general and, in particu-lar, to those of the political line adopted by the BolshevikParty and the way this line was implemented. The line wasmaterialized in the shape of “price policy” and “planning.”In these planes, the class struggles developing among thepeasantry became linked with the class struggles between theproletariat and the various sections of the bourgeoisie, and this


is why it is important to analyze the conditions under whichagricultural products entered into circulation, and also theconditions governing the supply of industrial goods to thepeasantry.

I. Preliminary remarks

During the NEP period the changes that the class strugglesbrought about in exchange conditions had a considerable in-fluence on the concrete practice of the worker-peasant allianceand on the differential class effects of this practice, and espe-cially on relations between the poor, middle, and rich peas-ants.

Analyzing the social conditions of exchange means also re-vealing the characteristic features of the economic practices inwhich the various agents of the exchange processes were in-volved, and the constraints to which they were subject. Theseconstraints were themselves bound up with the totality ofclass relations and practices. Whether they assumed the ap-pearance of constraints “exercised by the market” or of “regu-latory” constraints, they always possessed an ideological di-mension, and this usually played a dominant role. Ideologicalrelations subordinated exchange, in a way not always directly“visible,” to the effects of the class struggles, including thosestruggles which were fought out on the ideological level.

(a) The “constraints” upon buying andselling

Later we shall see, in concrete terms, how these variousconstraints operated. In order, however, to make clear fromthe start what is meant, it may be useful to give some indica-tions. The reader will recall, for example, that during most ofthe NEP period the degree to which the majority of the poorand middle peasants participated in exchange, and the ways inwhich they did this, were determined by a combination ofeconomic, ideological, and political constraints. These were


the constraints which obliged them to dispose rapidly of thegreater part of the products they marketed, thereby receivingprices much less advantageous than those which the richpeasants were able to obtain some months later. The con-straints which were thus brought to bear upon the majority ofthe poor and middle peasants—and which constituted one ofthe factors in the “information of market prices”—were duenot only to the taxes they had to pay and to their indebtedness(repayment of loans obtained from rich peasants) but also toideological and political relations in which they were inte-grated.

On the one hand, there was at the beginning of the NEP noapparatus of coercion capable of forcing the poor and middlepeasants as a whole to pay their taxes and repay their debts,and, above all, to do so quickly. The “constraint,” which at thattime weighed upon the peasant masses, was essentiallyideological; it was constituted by the peasants’ integration intoideological relations which made them see it a duty to settletheir tax and debt obligations quickly and forbade them toundertake collective actions to escape from the exigencies oftheir creditors and of the fiscal authority. On the other hand,these same ideological relations—profoundly different in thisrespect from those to which the mass of peasants had beensubject before the revolution—encouraged them to increasetheir production to market in order to equip their farms better,even that part of their crops required to satisfy their “physio-logical needs.” Lenin noted this in the autumn of 1922, whenhe said that:

the overwhelming majority of the population of Russia are smallpeasants, who have now thrown themselves into production withextraordinary zeal, and have achieved (partly owing to the assis-tance the government has given them by way of seed, etc.)enormous, almost incredible success, particularly if we bear inmind the unprecedented devastation caused by the Civil war,the famine and so forth. The small peasants have been so suc-cessful that they delivered the state tax amounting to hundredsof millions of poods of grain with extraordinary ease, and almostwithout any coercion.1


The ideological relations in which the peasant masses wereintegrated in the NEP period, and which largely determinedthe way they participated in exchange, were extremely com-plex in nature, and changed as the years went by.

At the outset of the NEP an essential element in theseideological relations was the confidence which the peasantmasses felt in the Soviet government’s will to help them andimprove their lot. This confidence accounted for the “ease”with which the peasant masses, though poor, paid their taxes,and the speed with which they sold part of their production soas to meet this kind of obligation. That same confidence, com-bined with their idea of what was needed in order to improvetheir lot, also led them to sell even what might have beenconsidered “necessary” for their own consumption, so as to beable to buy new means of production.2 Indeed, “the poorestpeasants sold . . . most of what they produced not so muchunder the pressure of taxation as for the purpose of acquiringmanufactured goods.” 3 This was a “constraint to sell” whichresulted from class ideological relations, in particular fromrelations which stimulated the poor and middle peasants notto go on accepting their lot as “fate” but to escape from kulakdomination by equipping and, to a lesser extent, by organizingthemselves. This was one of the objective bases of thedynamism of NEP agriculture.4 It was also one of the forms ofthe participation of the peasantry in exchange, forms whichexercised a certain effect on the actual conditions of exchange,especially as regards the selling prices of agricultural goodsand the fluctuation of these prices. These prices were alsobound up with class relations, both because those relationsdetermined the conditions of production (what was produced,and the cost of this production in terms of labor) and theconditions of exchange.

Toward the end of the NEP period, especially from 1928 on,the system of “constraints to sell” affecting agricultural pro-duce underwent change. On the one hand, the apparatus ofcoercion present in the countryside was strengthened. It in-tervened in a real way, first in order to secure the payment oftaxes, and then to secure the deliveries required under the


system of “planned contracts” (I shall come back to this point)or the “emergency measures.” On the other hand, the fre-quently experienced shortage of industrial goods in the ruralareas caused the poor and middle peasants to become morehesitant about selling their produce, since they were not sureof being able to buy the means of production and the con-sumer goods they needed. The procurement crisis of 1928 and1929 can therefore be analyzed only if we take account of thechanges in the ideological and political relations to which thedifferent strata of the peasantry were then subject.

(b) The class effects of the “price policy”

During the NEP, as we shall see, prices were in part “free” andin part “fixed administratively.” Actually, even “free” pricesdepended very largely on measures taken by the state—on themagnitude of its purchases and sales, and on the level of costsof production in state-owned industrial enterprises. Thus,prices, which affected the conditions of reproduction in ag-riculture, were in considerable measure the result of the over-all policy followed by the Soviet government. This policy,therefore, produced class effects: it was a particular form ofthe class struggle, connected especially with the developmentof this struggle at the level of the state machine and the rulingParty.

The actual class effects of the “price policy” could be verydifferent from those expected by the Party leadership. Thisobservation is especially important in relation to the NEPperiod, when the class effects of the social conditions govern-ing exchange often differed from the effects that had beenexpected or aimed at. Analysis of the social conditions ofexchange must endeavor to discover the reasons for such dif-ferences.

In the NEP period these differences resulted from theweakness of the ties that linked the ruling Party with broadsections of the masses (mainly the peasant masses). They alsoresulted from the weakness of the theoretical analyses carriedout by the Party, being themselves consequences of misun-


derstanding due to ideology—and so, of class ideological rela-tions. This can be seen clearly if we study the way in whichrelations developed between town and country, and the classcontradictions fostered by this development, contradictionswhich came to a head in the final crisis of the NEP.

II. The conversion of agricultural produceinto money

A study of the overall evolution of the exchange of agricul-tural produce and the conditions under which this exchangetook place enables us to perceive the influence exerted byexchange conditions upon class relations and upon the finalcrisis of the NEP.

(a) The overall evolution of the exchange ofagricultural produce and the economicand social significance of this exchange

The way in which the exchange of agricultural produceevolved, compared with the way agricultural productionevolved, shows the extent to which the peasant farms werelinked with the market—the extent to which these farms hadmoved from a subsistence economy to one linked with theSoviet, or even the world, market. It is to be noted that in thecourse of the NEP period the connection between the peasanteconomy and the market developed rapidly. Even by 1923–1924 this connection had increased as compared with theprerevolutionary period. This fact refutes an opinion which israther widely held to the effect that the agrarian revolution, bymultiplying small farms, had resulted in an increase in subsis-tence farming.

Already in 1923–1924 the total marketed share of agricul-tural production was 25 percent larger than prewar, anduring the following years this progress continued.5 As re-gards grain, which possessed decisive importance, the total


marketed share came to 36.1 percent in 1924–1925, comparedwith 32 percent in 1913.6 From the political and socialstandpoint, we need to note that, in the chief grain-producingareas, the total marketed share of the grain produced washigher in the case of the poor peasant farms than in that of thefarms of the well-to-do or rich peasants, which explains whythe fluctuations in agricultural prices, especially grain prices,and the forms of marketing, were so important for the lessprosperous sections of the peasantry.

Another noteworthy point is that the net marketed share ofagricultural production 7 increase more slowly than the grossmarketed share. Thus, in 1924–1925 the net marketing ofagricultural produce (corresponding to what was called the“agricultural balance”) was, in absolute figures, 46.6 percentless than prewar. 8 As a whole, the agricultural balance tendedto increase a little faster than gross agricultural production;but this was not so in the case of grain (the prices for whichevolved in a way that was not very favorable to the peasants), afact that had important economic consequences and contrib-uted to the final crisis of the NEP.9

(b) The participants in the exchange ofagricultural produce

A study of the principal direct participants in exchange isnecessary if we are to understand some of the contradictionswhich exploded toward the end of the NEP period.

A fundamental aspect of the exchange of agricultural pro-duce under the NEP was that an important fraction of thosewho sold this produce consisted of poor and middle peasantswho were obliged to buy later on (in the same farming year)more or less substantial amounts of the same produce thatthey themselves had sold previously. Since they were usuallyobliged to make their purchases at prices higher than thosethey had received, these operations signified for them a loss ofreal income. Such operations were forced upon them by theirneed to obtain money as soon as possible after the harvest, soas to repay their debts, buy indispensable manufactured


goods, and pay their taxes. Their subsequent purchases ofproduce similar to what they had themselves previously soldwere often effected with money obtained by means of aux-iliary activities, or by contracting fresh debts. At the begin-ning of the NEP, about one-fifth of the wheat marketed wassold in this way by peasants who had later to buy wheat inorder to meet their needs as consumers.

Those who bought agricultural produce directly, and theprices they paid, were also very diverse. A section of thebuyers consisted of the peasants themselves: some boughtproduce for their own consumption, while others (mainly richpeasants) bought produce in order to sell it later at higherprices.10

The nonpeasant purchasers of agricultural produce wereprivate traders, state and cooperative organizations, and indi-viduals who came to buy in the peasant markets. In 1924–1925these groups of purchasers absorbed 28, 37.1, and 34.9 per-cent, respectively, of this part of market production.11 In theyears that followed, the share accounted for by private tradersfell rapidly.

Throughout the NEP period the Soviet government stroveto develop the activity of the state and cooperative purchasingorgans, in particular to ensure so far as possible the regularprovision of supplies for the towns, the army, industry, andforeign trade, and to reduce fluctuations in prices for the con-sumer. The operations carried out by these organs were basedmainly on purchasing plans, and their fulfillment constitutedwhat was called “planned procurement” of agricultural pro-duce (though some of the purchases made by the state andcooperative organs might not, in fact be “planned”).

III. The supply of industrial goods to thepeasantry

Supplying industrial goods to the peasantry played an es-sential part in the reproduction of the material and social


conditions of agricultural production. In order to ensure thecontinuity of their production, the peasants had to be able toobtain, at a price compatible with what they received whenthey sold their own produce, the articles they needed to pro-vide their farms with means of production and to cover thatpart of their consumption which was not covered by agricul-tural produce. The circulation thus realized had also to ensurea certain equilibrium between the ebb and flow of cash. Tothis end it was necessary that the net cash receipts of thecountry dwellers should, taking one year with another, beconvertible into town-made goods, once taxes payable in cashhad been discharged and such savings as the peasants weredisposed to make had been provided for.

The first problem that arose in this connection was that ofensuring a satisfactory supply of industrial goods for the coun-tryside.

In the NEP period this supply might come from a variety ofsources. It could be provided by private industry or by state-owned industry, and it could originate in the towns or in thecountryside itself. Indeed, a substantial proportion of privateindustry was at that time accounted for by rural handicrafts.Their existence was a source of difficulty for the state sector.On the one hand, they enabled the countryside to survive, tosome extent, without the towns, whereas the towns could notsurvive without the countryside. On the other, the prices atwhich the rural craftsmen could supply consumers’ require-ments set an upper limit to the prices at which state industrycould sell its own products—unless it managed to control theprovision of supplies to rural industry so as to keep withinstrict limits the competition coming from the latter.

(a) Private industry and rural handicrafts

The measures taken at the start of the NEP made possible arelatively large-scale revival of the activity of rural crafts.These crafts (which were destined to disappear during the1930s) were of great importance to the peasantry. They pro-vided a large proportion of the peasants’ consumption of


manufactured goods: implements, building materials, con-sumer goods (textiles, clothing, pottery, footwear, cannedfood, etc.). Furthermore, they ensured incomes not to befrowned on to a large number of poor and middle peasantswho spent part of their time working as craftsmen, and,through the sale of craft products in the towns, they were asource of cash receipts for the rural sector.

Toward the end of the NEP period, “small-scale industry”employed 4.4 million people, or about 60 percent of the totalnumber of workers in industry. Nearly 3.6 million of theseworkers belonged to craft production units in the villages,12

and 90 percent of them were also peasants. In 1926 fewer thanone-tenth of these rural craftsmen were organized in officiallyrecognized cooperatives. Approximately another tenth wereorganized in “unofficial” cooperatives. The rest were “inde-pendent” craftsmen. Actually, those craftsmen who did notwork for a local clientele but for a distant market were oftendependent, in this period, upon private traders—the “Nep-men.” The Soviet economist Larin estimated that in 1927one-quarter of the craftsmen’s gross production was more orless controlled by private capital,13 which came on the sceneeither to buy up part of the craftsmen’s production in order tosell it in other localities, or else to sell raw materials to thecraftsmen. Though Larin’s estimate is doubtless exaggerated,it remains true that a section of those who were classified asrural craftsmen were, in reality, dependent on private capital.This situation was to a large extent the consequence of thepoor functioning of state commercial organs.

During the NEP the Bolshevik Party was, in principle, infavor of the rural crafts, which it wished to guide to an increas-ing degree along the path of cooperation. The resolutionadopted by the Fifteenth Party Congress (December 1927),laying down directives for the preparation of the Five-YearPlan, still stressed the role to be played by the craftsmen. Thisresolution stated that the crafts must be developed as a neces-sary complement to large-scale industry, as a means ofeliminating the shortage of goods and of reducing unem-ployment.


This orientation, in principle favorable to the crafts—especially the rural crafts—went on being reaffirmed down tothe end of 1929. In that year it was still being emphasized that,in a number of branches of industry, the crafts made it possi-ble to obtain large quantities of goods while requiring verymuch smaller investments than large-scale industry.14 Thus,for the production of footwear, the crafts needed only one-tenth as much investment for the same volume of production.Actually, the crafts came up against increasing hostility fromthe heads of large-scale state industry: the latter saw in thecraftsmen so many competitors for markets, supplies, andcredits, and they often contrived to ensure that supplies tocraftsmen provided by the state’s commercial organs werekept at the minimum.

Nineteen twenty-nine, the “year of great change,” was alsothe year of the downfall of the crafts and of rural industry.Thereafter, the maximum of material and financial resourceswere concentrated on large-scale industry, which also drainedaway the labor force available for the crafts. The rapid declineof rural industry entailed a series of negative consequences forcountry life, affecting the supply of goods and the incomes ofthe countryfolk.

Nevertheless, until the end of the NEP, the existence ofrural handicrafts and, more broadly, of small-scale private in-dustry, constituted an important aspect of the social conditionsgoverning production and exchange. But this aspect camemore and more into contradiction with the policy followedfrom 1928 on, and this contradiction, too, was to manifest itselfin the final crisis of the NEP.15

(b) Retail trade in industrial goods in therural areas

The rural areas were supplied with industrial goods not onlyby the rural craftsmen but also by state and cooperative tradeand by private trade. Down to 1926–1927 the turnover ofprivate trade was increasing in absolute terms, even thoughdeclining relatively. In 1928 the closing of a number of shops


and stalls and the canceling of many pedlars’ licenses broughtabout its decline, both absolute and relative.16 In the ruralareas this decline was such that it was far from offset by theincreased sales of the state and cooperative sector.17

In all events, in 1928 state and cooperative trade was far lessdeveloped in the countryside than in the towns. The officialnetwork of retail trade made less than 34 percent of its turn-over in the villages, though that was where more than 80percent of the Soviet population lived.18

Thus, during most of the NEP period (and, to an evengreater extent than before, toward the end of the period) thepeasants were at a great disadvantage regarding opportunitiesfor obtaining industrial goods of urban origin. Furthermore,the necessity of getting their supplies largely from privatetraders helped to reduce the peasantry’s “purchasing power.”While the private traders sometimes paid prices for some ofthe agricultural produce they bought higher than those paidby the “official” organs, they sold industrial goods at pricesthat were a great deal higher than those charged by state andcooperative suppliers. In 1927 the prices of cotton goods pre-vailing in the sphere of private trade exceeded by more than19 percent those charged by the state organs. The differencesamounted to nearly 57 percent for salt, 14 percent forkerosene, and nearly 23 percent for nails.19 Naturally, if thepeasants paid such high prices to private traders, the reasonwas that the state and cooperative network was unable to meettheir demands.

The closing of many private shops from 1928 on did notimprove matters for the peasants, given the increasing short-age of industrial goods and the inability of the official tradenetwork to quickly take the place of the private traders whohad been eliminated. In November 1928 a Soviet economicjournal depicted the situation, pointing out that the shortage ofindustrial goods was even worse than that of agricultural pro-duce:

There are enormous queues. . . . The demand being huge, nomore than 20–30 percent can be covered by the supply. . . . The


same applies to leather goods and to footwear. . . . There is noroof iron. . . . On the textile market a great tension prevails. Thepeasants go to the towns for goods, stand in queues. . . . Peas-ants produce receipts acknowledging deliveries of grain rangingfrom 50 to 500 poods; they would each of them buy 100–200roubles’ worth of industrial commodities, but all they are given is20 roubles’ worth. . .20

From 1928 on the disorganization of the trade network andthe “goods famine,” as it was called at the time, thus contrib-uted considerably to the procurement crisis, and then to thefinal crisis of the NEP.

IV. The conditions governing the fixing ofpurchase prices for agriculturalproduce, and the problem of the“scissors”

The relative movement of agricultural and industrial priceswas an essential factor in the changes affecting reproductionin agriculture.

The role played by the problem of the “scissors” 21 in thedestiny of the NEP leads us to study the way in which the stateintervened, or refrained from intervening, in the determina-tion of agricultural prices.

(a) The conditions governing the fixing ofpurchase prices for agriculturalproduce

During most of the NEP period the prices at which agricul-tural produce was purchased were, in principle, “marketprices”—in the sense that the peasants were not “legallyobliged’’ to surrender part of their production to the procurementorgans at a price fixed one-sidedly by the Soviet government. Infact, the conditions under which the purchase prices paid by


the procurement organs were established were subject to con-siderable variation.

Generally speaking, where the principal agricultural prod-ucts destined for industrial processing were concerned (cot-ton, flax, sugarbeet, etc.), the state organs were almost theonly purchasers. These organs thus held a sort of monopoly inthe purchase of these products.22 This situation enabled themto buy at prices that were particularly favorable to them. How-ever, agricultural policy was at that time aimed at developingtechnical crops, and so relatively high purchase prices werefixed for them, so as to encourage their development, and thisprocedure did indeed result in a rapid increase in the produc-tion of technical crops. In a number of regions this provedadvantageous mainly to the rich peasants, who were in thebest position to cultivate these crops.

During the NEP the conditions under which the officialtrading organizations fixed prices varied a great deal. At first,they were authorized to negotiate “freely” the prices at whichthey would buy agricultural produce. Nevertheless, theseprices had to be between a “ceiling” and a “floor” fixed by thecentral trade organs. The latter altered their prices each year,and varied them as between different regions. Later, this sys-tem was gradually replaced by a system of contracts (kontrak-tatsiya) which were negotiated between the state organs andthe peasants at the beginning of the “campaign.” These con-tracts became elements in the purchasing plan of the stateorgans. They specified the quantities to be supplied by thepeasants, the prices, the quality, the delivery dates, and so on.In return, the state organs undertook to grant certain creditsand to ensure the supply of certain means of production. Theprices paid for purchases made under these conditions werecalled “convention prices,” since they were, in principle,“negotiated” between the peasants and the state organs.However, the latter had to work from a “basic price” whichwas fixed each year by Narkomtorg for the various productsand regions. The “convention prices” actually paid might bebetween 5 and 10 percent above or below the “basic price.” 23

For products other than grain the “basic price” was usually


fixed at a high level so as not to discourage production, and toprevent too considerable a share of this production finding itsway into the handicraft sector (this applied especially to wooland skins).

The procurement organs had not only to fulfill their plan asregards quantity, they had also to operate in such a way as tocontribute to keeping prices as stable as possible. This taskwas especially important where grain was concerned, sincegrain prices had a serious bearing on the cost of living and thelevel of real wages. In the last years of the NEP this task wasgiven greater and greater priority, and the prices paid for grainprocured tended to be lower than “market” prices.24

The development of this tendency undermined theworker-peasant alliance. It was all the more harmful because itwas above all the poor and middle peasants who were affectedby the low prices imposed by the procurement organs: gener-ally, indeed, it was the least well-off of the peasants, who,already in the autumn, sold directly to the state organs a largepart of the produce they took to market.

The overall effect of this price policy was not only det-rimental to the firmness of the worker-peasant alliance, butalso unfavorable to grain production. Combined with thepoor supply of industrial goods to the rural areas, it was tocontribute to the explosion of the final crisis of the NEP.

The contradictions in which the “agricultural price policy”was caught were reflected in the frequent changes made in theconditions governing the fixing of the prices at which the stateorgans bought various products, and in the treatment of theprivate traders who competed with the procurement organs.

For most products of agriculture the state organs began byfixing mainly “convention” 25 or “negotiated” (soglasitelnye)prices which took fairly direct account of the prices prevailingin the private sector. Later, they fixed mainly “firm” (tvyordy)prices, which were lower than those paid in the private sector.The role of these “firm” prices increased more and more, andhe state sought to lower them, especially in the case of grain in1926–1927.26

Subsequently, partial upward readjustments of procurement


prices were decided on. However, these readjustments werelimited, so that the gap tended to grow, all the same, betweenthe “market” prices (which increased rapidly) and the pro-curement prices (which, moreover, lagged behind increases inthe costs of production).27 This was one of the immediatecauses of the growing difficulties in procurement and an im-portant factor in triggering off the final crisis of the NEP.

Under these conditions, for want of being able to organizeprocurement better and reduce the expenditure connectedwith it, the Soviet government was led—with a view tostabilizing as much as possible the prices at which it suppliedthe towns, and to having at its disposal quantities of grain thatwould not shrink catastrophically—to restrict further andfurther, and eventually to eliminate altogether, all privatetrade in grain. Along with this move, the contract system(kontraktatsiya) was also used to an increasing extent for theprocurement of grain.

In the last years of NEP the Soviet government made these“contracts” obligatory in practice. This meant that they wereno longer more than nominally “contracts.” 28 In fact, there-after, what the peasants had to deliver largely amounted tocompulsory deliveries. The NEP, which was supposed to leave it tothe peasants to dispose of that part of their produc-tion which they did not need for their own subsistence or topay the agricultural tax, was now virtually abandoned, andunder conditions which led to the adoption of measures ofconstraint from which the peasants tried to escape. Con-sequently, instead of isolating the rich peasants, these mea-sures helped to ensure that a growing number of peasantstended to unite in order to resist what they saw as measures ofrequisition.

(b) The “scissors” disparity betweenagricultural and industrial prices

The policy followed by the Bolshevik Party in the matter ofthe evolution of agricultural in comparison with industrialprices was, in principle, one aimed at reducing the prices of


industrial goods and “closing the scissors.” 29 Such a policywas necessary if the worker-peasant alliance was to be con-solidated, and if agriculture was to develop on the basis of itsown forces. A judicious application of this policy would en-able the poor and middle peasants to strengthen their positionsin relation to the rich peasants, to equip their farms better, andto organize themselves, with the Party’s aid. The followingfigures show that this policy appears to have achieved consid-erable positive results between 1923 (a year when the scissorswere wide open, in favor of industrial prices30) and 1928:

Ratio of agricultural pricesto retail prices of industrial goods 31

1913 100.01923–24 33.7 1927–1928 79.01925–1926 71.8 1928–1929 90.31926–1927 71.1 1929–1930 76.9

These figures inspire the following comments:1. In 1923–1924 the “purchasing power” of agricultural

products had been reduced to about one-third of what it wasbefore the war.

2. Between 1923–1924 and 192–1928 the “purchasingpower” of agricultural products appears to have been multi-plied by 2.3.

3. The same line of progress seems to have continued in1928–1929, when the ratio shown by the index was only 10percent short of what it had been prewar.

4. In 1929–1930 the situation was sharply overturned, withthe index falling below the level it had reached in 1927–1928.Some corrections need to be made to this picture:

1. The way that the situation of the poor and middle peas-ants evolved cannot be judged from these figures alone. Mostof them enjoyed a situation that was definitely better thanbefore the war, since they had more land. After 1923 theyimproved their situation still further, by increasing the propor-tion of land they held.

2. While grain production was crucially important, thepeasants who produced mainly grain were particularly disfa-


vored by the evolution of the ratio between prices for graindelivered to the procurement organs (the principal buyers ofthe grain produced by the poor peasants) and the retail pricesof industrial products. This evolution proceeded as follows:

Ratio of prices of grain procured by the stateto retail industrial prices 32

1913 33 100.01923–1924 29.1 1927–1928 65.21925–1926 68.7 1928–1929 76.11926–1927 56.6 1929–1930 76.9 34

3. The unfavorable effects of the high level of industrialprices were felt seriously by those peasants who had to buyfrom private traders, since the latter charged especially highprices. Thus, in December 1927, the retail prices of industrialproducts exceeded the 1913 level by 88 percent in the “of-ficial” (state and cooperative) sector, but by 140 percent in theprivate sector.35

In order to present a more concrete picture of the relativeprice levels, here are the quantities of various products ob-tained by the peasants in 1927 in exchange for the price thatthe procurement organs paid for one hundredweight of rye.36

Quantities obtained in 1927In the In the

cooperative privatesector sector In 1913

Textiles (meters) 12.99 10.91 23.72Sugar (kilograms) 7.65 7.45 14.60Kerosene (kilograms) 44.25 38.75 41.53Salt (kilograms) 135.5 86.5 165.8Nails (kilograms) 16.90 13.77 24.36

4. For the period from 1928 on it is not sufficient to con-sider merely the evolution of agricultural and industrialprices. To confine oneself to this means giving a falsely “em-bellished” picture of the peasants’ situation. From that date,in fact, a large proportion of the peasants’ cash income could


no longer, in practice, be exchanged for industrial products,owing to the “goods famine” that prevailed at the time, espe-cially in the countryside.37 This situation, which had alreadybeen experienced in the winter of 1925–1926, was severelydetrimental to the poorest peasants and those whose holdingswere least well equipped, as they could not improve theirequipment and so remained dependent on the rich peasants.

To sum up, the policy of closing the scissors enjoyed com-parative success down to 1927. Thereafter a “skid” occurred,parallel with the “procurement crisis” and partly accountingfor the latter. This “skid” was a consequence of the mistakesmade after 1926–1927 in the orientation of industrial policy, asregards both current production and investments. It revealedthat, in the concrete conditions in which it was then situated,the Soviet government did not possess that “power to controlprices” which it supposed itself to wield. The sudden confron-tation with this truth, combined with the increasing predomi-nance of conceptions that were unfavorable to the NEP, led tothe development of the “emergency measures,” the deepen-ing of crisis phenomena, and, finally, the complete andunprepared-for abandonment of the New Economic Policy.

V. The problems of accumulation and theevolution of peasant consumptionduring the NEP period

The preceding analyses have shown that what is meant bythe expression “complete abandonment of the NEP” is, infact, abandonment of what was left of the NEP in 1929.Actually, before 1929, the “NEP as it really was” consisted of acombination of contradictory measures, some of which were inconformity with Lenin’s conception of the NEP while otherswere not—it was a sort of combination of the “NEP” and the“non-NEP.” In practice, from 1925 on, the “non-NEP” aspectassumed increasing importance, and it became predominanttoward the end of 1929.


From 1922 to 1927, however, respect was shown to someundamental principles of the NEP, in particular the absenceof measures of constraint imposed on the peasant masses, thelevying of a fixed agricultural tax payable in cash, and theeffort to be made to “close the scissors.”

(a) The problems of accumulation and theincreasing abandonment of theprinciples of the NEP

Starting in 1925, the magnitude of the problems arisingfrom the need for accumulation on a scale sufficient to ensurethe reequipment of the economy, and the terms in whichthese problems were conceived, resulted in the adoption of aseries of measures which contradicted the NEP and jeopar-dized the improvement in the standard of living of the peasantmasses. Such improvement was one of the aims of the NEP asa road to socialism, being intended to help reduce the dispar-ity between the living conditions of the workers and the peas-ants.

Certain measures adopted during 1925 involved the risk oftransforming the “NEP as it really was” into a sort of road toprivate capitalism. These measures resulted from a resolutionadopted by the CC which met between April 23 and 30,1925.38 They were concerned mainly with extending the rightto lease land and extending wage relations in agriculture.

On the first point, the resolution authorized wider use bythe peasants of the right to lease land. Contracts of lease could,in certain cases, be made for a period of twelve years.39 Theresolution thus confirmed a decision taken on April 21, 1925,by the presidium of the VTsIK, modifying by “making moreflexible” the provisions of Article 28 of the Agrarian Code of1922. Thereafter, cases of authorized leasing of land grew sonumerous that it was possible for this practice to becomerelatively normal, whereas the 1922 Code had allowed it inonly exceptional cases.40

On the second point, the resolution of the CC ratified adecree adopted by the Sovnarkom on April 18, 1925, lifting


nearly all restrictions on the employment of wage labor bypeasants.41

These provisions were to remain in force in the followingyears, but from 1928 on they tended to become increasinglypointless: to lease land or hire wage workers meant definingoneself as a kulak and so attracting special danger from the“emergency measures.”

Nevertheless, between 1925 and 1928 these measures con-tributed to a certain reinforcement of the positions of the richand well-to-do peasants, as well as to an increase in theaccumulation they accomplished—this was, moreover, one ofthe purposes aimed at, and it was very explicitly shown bysome statements that were made on the eve of the adoption ofthe resolution mentioned above. The clearest passage to thiseffect is found in Bukharin’s speech of April 17, 1925, when hesaid:

The well-to-do upper stratum of the peasantry—the kulaks and,to some extent, the middle peasants too—are at present afraid toaccumulate. . . . If the peasant instals an iron roof, the next dayhe will be denounced as a kulak, and that will mean the end ofhim. If he buys a machine, he does it “in such a way that theCommunists won’t notice.” Improvement in agricultural tech-nique has come to be surrounded by an atmosphere of con-spiracy.

If we look at the various strata of the peasantry, we see thatthe kulak is discontented with us because we are preventing himfrom accumulating. At the same time, the poor peasants some-times grumble against us because we do not let them take em-ployment as agricultural workers in the service of that samekulak.

Our policy towards the rural areas should develop towards areduction and partial abolition of the many restrictions whichhold back the growth of the farms belonging to the well-to-dopeasant and the kulak. We ought to say to the peasants, to all thepeasants: get rich, develop your farms. . . . Paradoxical as itmay seem, we must develop the farm of the well-to-do peasant soas to help the poor peasant and the middle peasant.42

In this speech Bukharin was obviously preparing the Partyto accept the measures that were to be adopted a few days


later. What he said shows how at that time the problem ofaccumulation was linked with a line that relatively favored thewell-to-do strata of the peasantry. According to this line,some of the savings accumulated by the well-to-do peasantswere also to be drained off by the state through loans, andmade to serve accumulation in state-owned industry.

The measures thus taken did strengthen the kulaks to someextent, but their “contribution” to increased accumulation,especially in the state sector, remained negligible, and thiscaused the turn in policy in 1926 toward promoting growth instate-sector accumulation through credit expansion, currencyinflation, and an evolution of prices which especially af-fected, as we have seen, the poor and middle peasants.

Various figures show that the way in which the NEP wasimplemented had the result that it failed in one of its pur-poses, which was to reduce the gap between town and coun-try, particularly as regards consumption of industrial goods.

(b) The growing gap between rural andurban consumption of industrial goods

Between 1923 and 1927 the rural population’s share of theconsumption of industrial goods fell steadily.43 In the middleof the NEP period (in 1925–1926 [and the situation got worsein 1928]), consumption per head of population in the ruralareas, where almost all industrial goods were concerned, waslower than prewar, amounting to barely one-quarter of con-sumption per head in the towns.44

The level of consumption of the less well-off strata of thepeasantry was, of course, a good deal lower than what isrevealed by average figures.

This state of affairs expressed the weaknesses of “NEP as itreally was.” It was due partly to failure to close the scissors,partly to the smallness of the net marketed share of agricul-tural production (the share which enabled the peasants to buyindustrial goods), and also to the shortage of goods in the ruralareas. This last point calls for clarification, especially because,according to the interpretation of the crisis of the NEP given


by Preobrazhensky and the Trotskyists, the crisis was due to“excessive demand” from agriculture—that is, to a situationwhich dictated priority development for industry, the “financ-ing” of which must be accepted as a burden by the peasantry.Let us see how the overall peasant demand for industrialgoods evolved.

(c) The agricultural “surplus” and thedemand for industrial goods.45

According to S. Grosskopf’s estimates, the net balance ofpeasant sales, after deduction of taxes and other charges, fellfrom 1,347 million prewar roubles in 1912–1913, to 980 mil-lion prewar roubles in 1925–1926.46 Taking 1912–1913 as 100,the index for this balance stood at 72.7 in 1925–1926. Leavingaside the cash income which the peasants could get fromnonagricultural activities (income which we know has di-minished), and savings in cash (which do not markedly affectthe amounts being considered), the balance in question repre-sents the peasants’ demand for industrial goods. Between1912–1913 and 1925–1926 this demand thus declined by 27.3percent. Moreover, what this shows is the monetary expres-sion of demand, not its volume, which was affected by theincrease in the retail prices of industrial goods.

In 1925–1926 these prices were 2.2 times what they hadbeen before the war.47 The peasants’ demand for industrialgoods in terms of volume was proportionately less, so that wemust substitute 33 for 72.7.

The subsequent years saw a certain improvement. If weaccept that the net balance of agriculture, after deduction oftaxes and other charges, grew in proportion to the net sales ofagricultural produce, we get the following picture48:

Index of peasant demand for industrial goods(1912–1913 =100)

1926–1927 75.2 1927–1928 80.2

The volume of peasant demand for industrial goods obvi-ously increased a little more rapidly during those last two


years because industrial prices fell. Indeed, in 1928, as weknow, the peasants’ demand for industrial goods could not besatisfied.49

These few facts suffice to show the formal and abstractcharacter 50 of the interpretations of the crisis of the NEP putforward by Preobrazhensky and the Trotskyists, who attrib-uted the “shortage of industrial goods” to the increase inpeasant incomes and the “lag of industry behind agriculture.”

Actually, peasant demand does not account in the least forthe shortage of industrial goods. The respective dynamics ofindustrial production and of the monetary demand from therural areas for industrial goods reveal this clearly. Taking 1913as 100, the index of industrial production reached the follow-ing levels 51:

1925–1926 89.91926–1927 103.91927–1928 119.6

In 1925–1926 the index of industrial production thus sur-passed that of peasant demand for industrial goods by 12.2points. The gap grew larger in the following years, to 28.7 in1926–1927 and 39.4 in 1927–1928.

If there was a shortage of industrial goods, the reason for itmust be sought above all in the conditions of reproductioncharacteristic of the urban sector, and not in the countryside.The role thus played by the urban sector had consequencesthat were all the more negative because the links between theBolshevik Party and the peasant masses were weak, and theideological and political relations in which the peasantry it-self was caught were not, on the whole, favorable to thestrengthening of the worker-peasant alliance.

Notes

1. Lenin, CW, vol. 33, pp. 407-408. (Interview with Arthur Ran-some, correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, November1922 [my emphasis—C. B.]. One pood=16.4 kilograms.)


2. Hence the expressions so often used by Lenin when describingthe Soviet peasant: “hard-working” and “zealous.”

3. Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 169.4. See above, pp. 94 ff.5. The total marketed share means the ratio between total amount

sold and gross production. This share must be distinguished fromthat of net amount marketed, which is obtained by deducting theamount of purchases of agricultural produce made by the peas-antry from the total amount sold, and relating this figure to thatfor gross production. The net share marketed does not representthe evolution of the connection between the peasant farms andthe market but the demand for nonagricultural goods emanatingfrom these farms. The estimate given here is taken from L. N.Litoshenko’s article, “Krestyanskoye khozyaistvo i rynok,” inEkonomicheskoye Obozreniye, no. 5 (1925); quoted in Gross-kopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 167.

6. Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 168.7. For some figures, see above, p. 157.8. Calculated from Kontrolnye tsifry, p. 73.9. On these points see Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, pp. 67 ff.,

347 ff., above, p. 157 ff.10. Down to 1927–1928 the quantity of produce exchanged between

peasants was of about the same order of magnitude as that ofoff-village sales (Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p.916).

11. These percentages are fractions of the total turnover, so that theirmagnitude is affected by the prices at which the produce wasbought, and these prices were higher for buyers on the peasantmarkets than for the state’s purchasing organs. In 1926, for exam-ple, a pood (16.4 kilograms) of rye was sold for between 1.03 and1.44 rouble on the peasant markets, but was bought for 0.94rouble by the state (see B. Kerblay, Les Marchés paysans, pp. 112,114). In March 1928, in the Ukraine the price of rye on thepeasants’ market was 126.3 percent of that paid by the procure-ment organs; in March 1929 it rose to 369.2 percent of that price.(See Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn, April 26, and May 1, 1929, andTorgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta, April 6, 1929, quoted in A.Baykov, The Soviet Economic System, p. 70.)

12. The others (about 860,000) were either urban craftsmen or (fewerthan 80,000) workers employed in small-scale capitalist industry(Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I . pt. 1, pp. 390–391).

13. Yu. Larin, Chastnyi Kapital v SSSR, pp. 119–120.


14. Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta, July 5, 1929.15. See below, p. 205 ff.16. See below, p. 203 ff.17. The protracted incapacity of state and cooperative trade to re-

place private trade in the villages was due particularly to thecircumstance that the peddlars and shopkeepers were contentwith installations that were simpler than those required by themanagers and officials of the state and cooperative organs. Thelatter very often insisted on having a proper shop and a van,where their rivals had made do with a mere shed and horses fortransport.

18. Baykov, The Soviet Economic System, p. 242.19. Ibid., p. 67.20. Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn, November 14, 1928, quoted in Baykov,

The Soviet Economic System, p. 70. Peasants who could producethe receipts mentioned were supposed to be given priority insupplies.

21. The term “scissors” was used with reference to the picture pre-sented by the graphs showing the movement of industrial andagricultural prices. It was said that “the scissors are opening,”when these prices diverged, whereas when they came closertogether, “the scissors are closing.” The scissors were regardedas having “closed” when the relative level of prices in 1918 wasreached.

22. In 1927–1928 planned state purchases corresponded to the fol-lowing fractions of marketed production: 100 percent of cottonand sugarbeet; 98 percent of flax and tobacco; 92 percent of furs;80 percent of skins; and 70 percent of wool (Baykov, The SovietEconomic System, p. 62). In the case of some important agricul-tural products, such as hemp and flax, marketed production wasless than prewar. (Ekonomicheskoye Zhizn, May 3, 1927; seealso Richard Lorenz’s thesis, Das Ende der Neuer ÖkonomischerPolitik, p. 28, and Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, Table 209, p.352.)

23. Baykov, The Soviet Economic System, p. 63.24. In 1926–1927 the tendency to fix low procurement prices for

grain was especially marked. In that year the index of procure-ment prices (100 being the 1911–1914 price level) stood at 118.7for grain, whereas it was 133.9 for state-procured products as awhole, and the average index of prices for all agricultural pro-duce, including purchases by individuals and private traders,stood at 149.3 (Kerblay, Les Marchés paysans, p. 119). Other


examples of substantial differences between procurement pricesand “market” prices have been mentioned above, for the years1926, 1928, and 1929 (see note 11 above, p. 159).

25. See above, p. 148.26. In 1926–1927 procurement prices were reduced by 20 percent

for grain, and then stood at 25 percent less for wheat and 50percent less for rye than the peasants could get on the privatemarket (Kerblay, Les Marchés paysans, p. 118).

27. Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 335.28. Especially because the procurement organs did not as a rule

succeed in providing the peasants with the amounts of fertilizer,selected seed, etc., which they had undertaken to provide whenthe “contracts” were signed. This aggravated the one-sidedcharacter of the obligations to which the peasants had to conform.

29. See note 21 above, p. 160.30. There was talk at that time of a “scissors crisis.”31. These figures have been calculated from the last column in Table

11 on p. 119 of Kerblay, Les Marchés paysans. The index showsthe evolution of the ratio between agricultural prices as obtainedby the producer and retail prices of manufactured goods (aweighted index of the public and private sectors). The way thatthe weighting has been performed obviously affects the way theindices evolve, and the fact that the public sector’s share wassmaller in the villages than in the towns has not been taken intoaccount in the table given here—so that the peasants’ situation waseven worse than is shown. For a calculation which takes thisfactor into account, see Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, pp. 195–196.

32. Calculated from the same source as the table on p. 151.33. For 1913 the prices recorded were, of course, market prices.34. Rye only.35. A. N. Malafeyev, Istoriya tsenoobrazovaniya SSSR, 1917–1963,

pp. 384-385. Coefficients calculated from indices with 1913–100.36. Baykov, The Soviet Economic System, p. 67, quoting Inland

Trade of the U.S.S.R. During Ten Years, p. 82. The 1913 figuresshow , of course, market prices.

37. See above, p. 147.38. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiykh, vol. I, pp. 922–932.39. Ibid., p. 927.40. On the Agrarian Code of 1922, see volume I of the present work

pp. 235–237. On the reform of 1925, see Sobranie Uzakonenii(1925), no. 27, art. 191; and Carr, Socialism, vol. I, pp. 257–258.


41. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, p. 927, and Carr, Socialism, vol.I, p. 268.

42. Pravda, April 24, 1925. A revised version of this speech of Bukha-rin’s was published in Bolshevik, April 30 and June 1 (nos. 8 and9/10 of 1925). In this version the word “kulak” was in mostinstances replaced by “well-to-do peasant.” There is a Frenchtranslation in N. Bukharin et al., La Question paysanne en URSS,pp. 139 ff.

43. Between 1923–1924 and 1926–1927 it fell from 59.4 percent to53.2 percent (Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 206).

44. On the other hand, thanks to the division of the land, the peasantpopulation’s consumption per head of food products was some-what greater in 1925–1926 than it had been before the war, andhad definitely improved so far as the less well-off sections wereconcerned. Nevertheless, consumption per head of wheatenflour, sugar, meat, bacon, fat, and eggs was still less in peasantfamilies than in the families of manual and office workers(Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, Table 92, p. 170, and Table 96,p. 174).

45. See also some other observations on this question, above, pp. 141ff.

46. Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 197.47. Calculated from Kerblay, Les Marchés paysans, p. 119.48. These figures take the percentage increase in net agricultural

sales as being as shown in the series of control figures for theyears under consideration (Kontrolnye tsifry 1929–1930 gg., p.540), that is, assuming as constant the rate of taxation and othercharges: this introduces a slight inaccuracy which seems hard torectify.

49. See above, pp. 146, 152.50. In March 1922, the CC of the Russian Communist Party had

examined Preobrazhensky’s theses on work in the rural areas andrejected them after discussing the criticism made by Lenin, whoblamed Preobrazhensky for his abstract formalism (see Lenin,CW, vol. 33, pp. 237 ff. The same formalism is found in Preo-brazhensky’s later writings: see some significant quotations inGrosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, pp. 188 ff.

51. This series was compiled by Gosplan for production by industryas a whole (E. Zaleski, Planning, pp. 380–381).

163

3. The reproduction and transformationof ideological and political relations inthe rural areas

The problems discussed in this chapter are especially largeand complex. Furthermore, the information available concern-ing them is, as a rule, inadequate and unreliable. We shalltherefore not deal with these problems in a thorough way here,but merely point out the outlines and main aspects, as thesebecome apparent in the light of the information we possess. Itis plain that only far-reaching additional research (which as-sumes, among other things, access to the Soviet archives,which is not at present possible) will make it conceivable tosubject to really systematic treatment questions which we canonly touch upon here.

From the standpoint of ideology and politics, the situation ofthe Soviet countryside during the NEP was characterized bythe poor integration of the peasantry into the Soviet systemand the feeble penetration of socialist ideas among them.These circumstances were connected with the low level ofactivity by the Party and the soviets in the villages and thereproduction, in hardly altered form, of the old ideologicalrelations embodied in the mir, the family, and the church.

I. The Party’s implantation among thepeasants

We know that at the end of the civil war relations betweenthe Bolsheviks and the organs of Soviet power on the onehand, and the peasantry, on the other, were extremelystrained.1 One of the immediate aims of the NEP was, pre-


cisely, to reduce this tension, and thereby to strengthen theworker-peasant alliance. There can be no doubt that between1921 and 1927 the NEP was a success as regards strengtheningthe peasants’ confidence in the Soviet government. This appliesespecially to their confidence in the government’s capacity toget the economy back on its feet. Between 1923 and 1927considerable progress was achieved in this respect—progressthat was to a large extent compromised in 1928–1929 by“blind” application of the “emergency measures.”

However, there was a big difference between the peasants’having confidence that the new government was capable ofmanaging the economy and their being ready to give activesupport to this government—or, going even further, to jointhe Bolshevik Party. Yet, unless a sufficient number ofgenuine peasants joined the Party, it could neither exert effec-tive ideological influence in the rural areas nor, without realinside knowledge of their problems, effectively take the peas-ants’ interests in hand, and thereby become capable of de-veloping its own conception of the peasantry’s place in theeconomy and politics of the Soviet power.

As regards the number of peasants joining the BolshevikParty, and the Party’s work in the countryside, the situationleft a great deal to be desired. During the NEP period, theParty’s implantation in the rural areas remained slight. In hisreport to the Fourteenth Party Congress, Stalin mentionedthat the number of Party members belonging to village cellsrelated to the total adult rural population showed that thepercentage of Communists in the rural areas had increasedfrom 0.26 at the time of the Thirteenth Congress to 0.37 at thetime of the Fourteenth.2 Such low proportions make a contrastwith the importance of the tasks which the Bolshevik Partyhad to carry out in the countryside, in a mainly rural country.This organizational situation was, in part, a heritage from thepast, but it also reflected the weaknesses in the Party line onpeasant questions.

Commenting on the figures quoted, Stalin said:Our Party’s growth in the countryside is terribly slow. I do notmean to say that it ought to grow by leaps and bounds, but the


percentage of the peasantry that we have in the Party is, after all,very insignificant. Our Party is a workers’ party. Workers willalways preponderate in it. . . . But it is also clear that without analliance with the peasantry the dictatorship of the proletariat isimpossible, that the Party must have a certain percentage of thebest people among the peasantry in its ranks. . . . From thisaspect, matters are still far from well.3

Nor do the figures quoted fully expose the Party’s weaknessamong the peasantry, because not all members of a rural cellwere peasants. According to the CC’s statistics of January1927, less than half of the members of rural cells were actualpeasants—the others were officials of Soviet institutions, em-ployees of the cooperative societies, teachers, and so on.4

Among these members some might be of rural origin, but theywere no longer peasants. We need to reduce the numbersquoted by about one-half if we are to form an estimate of theParty’s implantation among the peasantry in the middle yearsof the NEP period.

It should be added that in 1927 genuine peasants made uponly 10 percent of the Party’s total membership—in a countrywhere the peasantry made up more than 80 percent of thepopulation.5

Throughout the NEP years the Party’s implantation in therural areas remained extremely slight: in 1928 there were only186,000 Party members in rural cells, and in 1929, 242,000.6However, the scope of the crisis that the country and theParty were then experiencing was such that, in order to tacklethe tasks before them, the Sixteenth Party Conference (April23–29, 1929) considered it necessary to “purge” the member-ship, especially in the rural cells. This conference declaredthat only a purge could transform these cells “into points ofsupport for the Communist Party in the countryside,strengthen confidence in the Party, bring into the Party’s ranksthe best Communist elements . . . and promote the collectivi-sation of agriculture.” 7

Actually, the purge was already under way, and the ruralcells had not been reconstructed, when the Soviet Union en-tered the period of mass collectivization. On the whole, collec-


tivization was carried out without the local organs of theParty being in a position to control the way it developed.

At the end of the NEP period the social composition of theParty’s rural cells was far from satisfactory: the proportion ofrich and well-to-do peasants was actually higher than theirproportion in the rural population as a whole.8 An inquirycarried out in 1929 among the rural Communists showed thatin the RSFSR one-quarter of these Party members possessedassets exceeding 800 roubles, whereas among the peasantry asa whole such assets were held by only one peasant in six. Ofthe peasants who joined the Party, many became officials.Apart from them, it was mainly middle peasants—perhapsemployers of wage labor—who had the time needed to par-ticipate fully in the Party’s activity.9

The qualitative weakness of the rural cells was partly thereason for the exceptional sweep of the purge carried outamong the Communists of the countryside. Between 1929 and1930, 16 percent from rural cells were expelled as against 8percent from factory cells.10 However, the magnitude of thispurge was due not only to the circumstance mentioned, butalso to the distrust felt by certain Party cadres toward peasantsin general. Indeed, one is struck by the fact that the purge wasmuch less severe (10 percent) in the “nonproductive” cells,although a Party resolution had described these as the oneswhere the most serious abuses occurred (misuse of Partymembers’ authority for self-seeking purposes, embezzlementof funds, nepotism, careerism, bureaucratic attitude to themasses),11 the ones in which “everyday forms of decay” wereto be observed and in which elements alien to the proletariat,bureaucratized elements, and persons who, having come fromother Parties, retained their old ideological conceptions wereconcentrated.

So massive a purge of the rural cells was due also to theincompetence and routinism of many of the Party membersthen working in the countryside. Numerous reports show thateven politically reliable elements, devoted to the BolshevikParty, were not up to the tasks that devolved upon them. Theyissued more orders than explanations, and, owing to their lack


of roots in peasant life, the explanations they gave remainedabstract, remote from reality, often even failing to deal withconcrete problems. Frequently they were unable to convincepeople or made decrees which were inappropriate and causeddiscontent.12 However, the major causes of expulsion from theParty were corruption and nepotism, or a way of life andconduct that were incompatible with membership in theParty.13

Altogether, the conditions under which the Party operatedin the countryside failed to correspond, both quantitativelyand qualitatively, with the demands of the situation. From thequantitative angle, toward the end of the NEP the members ofrural cells who were really peasants amounted to only about0.1 percent of the peasantry. Therefore, the Party could fulfillonly with difficulty its role as the instrument of the dictator-ship of the proletariat in the countryside, as the apparatus forintroducing proletarian ideas among the peasantry, the linkbetween the Soviet power and the peasant masses. Thisweakness of the Party affected the conditions under which therural soviets operated: they worked badly, and, in turn, theirbad work reflected negatively on the Party itself.

II. The rural soviets

At the outset of the NEP period, when the peasant revolts of1921 were still recent and movements of discontent among thepeasantry not uncommon, the rural soviets were hardly linkedwith the masses at all. Their composition was frequently de-termined by Party decisions that were confirmed by electionsin which only a minority of peasants took part. The ruralsoviets were not genuine mass organizations.

In 1924 the Bolshevik Party leadership applied itself spe-cially to the problem of the rural soviets. On October 26 Stalinspoke to the CC on “the Party’s tasks in the countryside.”14 Hedrew attention to the peasants’ mistrust of the towns, thediscontent that still prevailed in many rural areas, the fact that


there was still risk of peasant revolts, and the need to developthe rural soviets. He linked this need with the flourishing ofnon-Party organizations—peasant committees, cooperatives,Young Communist organizations—which was a feature of theperiod.15 In his eyes, the flourishing of these organizationsinvolved a danger that they might escape from the Party’sguidance, whereas development of the rural soviets wouldenable the working class to fulfill completely its role of leader-ship in relation to the peasantry.16

A few days earlier, on October 22, Stalin had already dis-cussed these questions before a conference of secretaries ofrural Party units.17 He emphasized particularly the need forrevitalizing the soviets. Referring to the revolts which hadoccurred in several rural localities in Georgia, he said:

What happened in Georgia may be repeated all over Russia if wedo not radically change our very approach to the peasantry, if wedo not create an atmosphere of complete confidence between theParty and the non-Party people, if we do not heed the voice of thenon-Party people, and, lastly, if we do not revitalise the Sovietsin order to provide an outlet for the political activity of the toilingmasses of the peasantry.18

The revitalizing of the soviets was seen as a means of form-ing nuclei of activists, among whom the Party would be ableto recruit, while the peasants would learn how to managetheir own affairs.

In order to carry this task through, according to Stalin, aradical change would have to be made in the way in whichthe Party dealt with peasant problems. “There must be nodomineering [by the Party] and an atmosphere of mutualconfidence must be created between Party and non-Partypeople.” The rural soviets must be given a “material basis” fortheir revitalization through “the institution of local budgets,”with authority to collect taxes.19

Although ratified by the CC,20 and considered now a Partypractice, the orientations expressed in these speeches were inreality pursued very unevenly. They were to be reiteratedagain and again until the end of the NEP period. Thus, after


the Fourteenth Party Conference, Stalin repeated in May 1925what he had said in 1924; but he put some points more sharply.When presenting a summary of these tasks that the FourteenthParty Conference had decided upon to an assembly of activistsof the Moscow Party organization, he described the positionlike this: “The second task consists in gradually but steadilypursuing the line of eliminating the old methods of administra-tion and leadership in the countryside, the line of revitalisingthe soviets, the line of transforming the soviets into genuinelyelected bodies, the line of implanting the principles of sovietdemocracy in the countryside.” 21

The Party’s rural cadres put up considerable resistance tothe line of extending soviet democracy. This is proved bysome phrases in Stalin’s report, where he criticizes the style ofwork of these cadres and at the same time shows how thepeasants were awakening to political life. He begins by de-nouncing the behavior of a certain district secretary, whoseattitude he depicts like this: “What do we want newspapersfor? It’s quieter and better without them. If the peasants beginreading newspapers they will start asking all sorts of questionsand we shall have no end of trouble with them.”

Then he adds: “And this secretary calls himself a Com-munist! It scarcely needs proof that he is not a Communist buta calamity.” 22

That these declarations and resolutions had any extensiveeffect is far from evident, since it was considered necessary togo on restating them right down to the end of the NEP period.Nevertheless, changes did take place. For example, morepeasants took part in elections. The proportional voting, whichwas only 30 percent in 1923, reached 45 percent in 1925, androse to more than one-half of the peasant electorate during thesecond half of the 1920s.23

We must not, however, overestimate the significance of suchfigures. The increased proportion of peasants taking part inelections resulted to some extent from a certain pressure thatwas brought to bear on them. It was not always followed bycorresponding increase in the activity of the rural soviets, or inthe interest taken in this activity by the peasant masses.


One of the obstacles in the way of the development ofgenuine soviet power in the countryside was the influenceexerted by the kulaks over a section of the peasant massesduring the NEP period. Another was the inadequacy of thefinancial resources at the disposal of the village soviets, whichprevented them from undertaking any really useful activity.Meanwhile the traditional forms of peasant organization con-tinued to exist, and were usually endowed with material andfinancial means 24 that the soviets lacked; so, they oftenseemed more “effective” than the latter, and they were fre-quently dominated by the rich peasants.

Finally, the attitude taken up by the local Party cadres andsoviet officials, their “authoritarianism,” contributed to hold-ing back the activity of the village and district soviets.

This “authoritarianism” did not result from the “psychol-ogy” of the officials in question but from their class attitude.Having to a large extent centralized in their own hands thereality of power in the locality, the officials of the sovietapparatus (who were often former officials of the Tsarist ad-ministration), occupied a politically dominant position, and,unless they were true revolutionaries, would not spontane-ously let go of it, subject themselves to control by the masses,or permit the latter to run their own affairs. Only class struggleby the peasant masses could alter such behavior, but it washard for such a struggle to develop, owing to the insufficientpresence of the Party among the peasantry, and so the lattertended to look after their affairs through their traditional or-ganizations, like the skhod.

In his speeches of June 1925 at the Sverdlov University,Stalin noted that the situation in the rural soviets was highlyunsatisfactory . He said that

until now, the situation was that quite a number of rural districtswere governed by small groups of people, connected more withthe uyezd and gubernia administrations than with the rural popu-lation. The result of this was that those who governed the ruraldistricts mostly looked to the top, the uyezd, and least of alllooked to the bottom, to the rural population: they felt responsi-ble not to the villages, not to their electors, but to the uyezd andgubernia administration. . . . The result of this was unchecked


arbitrariness and tyranny of the rulers, on the one hand, anddiscontent and murmuring in the countryside, on the other. Weare now putting an end to this state of affairs. . . .25

Stalin observed that frequently the elections to the ruralsoviets were not genuine elections, but a bureaucratic proce-dure which made possible “smuggling in ‘deputies’ by meansof all kinds of trickery and of pressure exercised by the smallgroups of rulers who were afraid of losing power.”26

As a result of the situation thus described, fresh electionswere organized in 1925 and 1926. So as to combat the electoralpractices previously operative, the right to vote was extendedto some categories of the rural population which had hithertobeen deprived of it.27

Actually, given the ideological and political balance offorces that obtained in the countryside at that time, togetherwith the weakness of the Party’s rural cells, rich peasants oftensucceeded in getting into the rural soviets, which obviouslydid not render the latter more capable of responding to thereal needs of the peasant masses. Penetration of the ruralsoviets by the kulaks was exposed in articles published in theSoviet press. One of these articles noted that

since the Soviets have begun to take a share in village life, thekulaks have increased their efforts to subordinate them and bringthem within the sphere of their influence. Though Party organi-sations have shown more strength in these elections [1926?] thanin previous years, yet in some cases the directives not to applypressure or administrative measures [on the electorate] wereinterpreted as an order to stop Party interference in the electioncampaign.28

The consequence had been penetration of the soviets by richpeasants, or their “representatives.”

This situation was due at that time to the ideological influ-ence wielded over a section of the middle peasantry by thewell-to-do peasants. At the beginning of 1925 Stalin noted theexistence of such influence in a number of rural districts29—ata time when he was warning against the temptation to stir upclass struggle against the kulaks.30

The infiltration of the kulaks into the rural soviets was also


due to the economic pressure that the rich peasants couldbring to bear on the poor and middle strata of the peasantry.This pressure was made possible by the position that thekulaks held in the economic life of the village, by the fact thatthey leased land, hired out means of production (ploughs,horses, etc.), and were creditors of some of the poor and mid-dle peasants. These bonds of dependence on the rich peasantswere reflected in both the composition of the rural soviets andtheir activity.

The slogan of revitalizing the soviets enjoined the Party’srural cells to do everything possible to help the peasantmasses emancipate themselves from the influence of the well-to-do strata of the peasantry and take their affairs in hand forthemselves. The fact that this slogan remained on the agendaall through the NEP period shows that the task assigned wasstill unaccomplished. Thus, in November 1926 Kalinin said tothe Executive Committee of the Soviets of the RSFSR: “Ourchief task is to draw the broad masses into Soviet construction,i.e., to revitalise the Soviets.” 31

Actually, at the beginning of 1929 the activity of the villagesoviets was still very inadequate. The village soviet was seenby the peasants as “an artificial creation enjoying none of theprestige or efficacy of the traditional indigenous peasant unit,the mir.” 32 At that time there were upwards of 72,000 ruralsoviets, each of which covered several (an average of eight)villages or “inhabited localities.” Each rural soviet had anaverage of eighteen members, but their meetings were veryirregular and, usually, only between five and seven of thedeputies attended. It even happened quite often that therewould be only one or two plenary meetings a year, while thesoviet’s work was carried on by the chairman and secretaryelected by the soviet. These men were paid very little—merepittances to supplement other sources of livelihood—andoften gave up their jobs to take better paid ones. It was notuncommon for the chairman of a rural soviet to be barelyliterate and scarcely capable of reading the documents sentout by the central government or by the district or regionalsoviets.33


To sum up, during the second phase of the NEP period,apart from the role played by the rich peasants, there were anumber of obstacles in the way of a real revitalizing of therural soviets: the Party’s weakness in the countryside, thedistrustful attitude of many cadres toward the peasantry, andthe existence of a contradictory peasant ideology, which couldhave been changed only by a policy pursued actively by theParty—a policy aimed at strengthening the influence of revo-lutionary ideas and speeding up the advance along thesocialist road, uniting the initiatives of the poor and middlepeasants, and transforming the way in which the “land com-munities” and the skhod functioned.

III. The contradictions in “peasantideology” and the role played byideological centers outside BolshevikParty control in the rural areas

Owing to the existence of distinct and conflicting classesamong the peasantry, “peasant ideology” was deeply divided.A number of notions that were mutually contradictory togethermade up the form of ideology to which the peasants were moreor less subject and in the name of which they waged theirstruggles, becoming either receptive or obstructive to the ac-tivity of the Bolshevik Party.

(a) Religious ideas

Religious ideas, as reproduced by the Orthodox Church, bythe religious sects, and by the peasant family, constituted atremendous force for social conservatism which the BolshevikParty was often at a loss to combat. Very often Party memberstried to launch frontal attacks on this force for social conser-vatism, instead of getting around it and preparing the de-velopment of its contradictions. Such frontal attacks usuallyended in defeat. In his speech of October 1924 on the Party’s


immediate tasks in the countryside, Stalin spoke of the prob-lem in these terms:

Occasionally some comrades are inclined to regard the peasantsas materialist philosophers and to think that it is enough todeliver a lecture on natural science to convince the peasant of thenon-existence of God. Often they fail to realise that the peasantlooks on God in a practical way, i.e., he is not averse to turningaway from God sometimes, but he is often torn by doubt: ‘Whoknows, maybe there is a God after all. Would it not be better toplease both the Communists and God, as being safer for myaffairs?’ He who fails to take this peculiar mentality of the peas-ant into account totally fails to understand what the relationsbetween Party and non-Party people should be, fails to under-stand that in matters concerning anti-religious propaganda acareful approach is needed even to the peasant’s prejudices.34

At the beginning of the NEP period frontal attacks on reli-gion were, as a rule, abstained from, and the obstacles thatreligious ideas were capable of presenting to the Party’s activ-ity were avoided. This was not so when the period was reach-ing its close. The frontal attacks that were launched at thattime ended more often than not in a negative result, withmany peasants grouping around the rich peasants and thedefenders of religion.

(b) The skhod and the mir

The idea of the peasantry being capable of existing inde-pendently of the towns and the state was also an element inpeasant ideology. This idea was materialized in the mir (trans-formed into the “land community”) and the skhod, or generalassembly of the peasants in each village.

These were ideological centers possessing very great politi-cal importance. Their existence contributed to weakening thevillage soviets, and gave support to a set of practices of resis-tance to the worker-peasant alliance which brought grist to thekulaks’ mill.

It will be recalled that the Soviet Agrarian Code of 1922recognized the legal existence of the “land community” and


“land association.” This was, in practice, a continuation of theformer village community or mir. It was managed, in princi-ple, ‘by the general assembly of the peasants, or skhod. Article54 of the Code granted legal personality to these land com-munities. Each of them owned communally what had be-longed by tradition to the mir, which meant that it possessedmaterial and financial resources that the rural soviet lacked.These resources were derived mainly from the dues paid foruse of the common lands, woods, and ponds.35 The land com-munity could also tax its members, and it was regarded as theowner of the smithies, sawmills, etc., belonging to the village.

The skhod’s authority was accepted by the majority of thepeasants, so that the mir (or the equivalent institution in theUkraine and elsewhere) enjoyed much greater power thanthe village soviet. The skhod was often dominated by the kulaks,as was made clear in reports given to the Communist Academyin 1926. Frequently the poor peasants did not even see anypoint in attending the meetings of the skhod: when they didthey were hardly listened to and even sometimes wereejected. At the Thirteenth All-Russia Congress of Soviets, in1927, delegates complained that at that time only between 10and 15 percent of the peasants who had the right to take part inthe skhod actually did so, and this minority consisted mainly ofthe better-off elements in the villages.36

In December 1927 the Fifteenth Party Congress tackled theproblems presented by the existence of the skhod and theother traditional peasant organizations playing a similar role.One of the rapporteurs noted that the total annual revenue ofthese organizations came to between 80 and 100 million rou-bles, whereas the village soviets had at their disposal only 16million roubles. 37 In a document prepared in 1927 for theOrgburo, the Communist Academy’s Institute for Building,the Soviets arrived at the following conclusion: “The eco-nomically independent land community takes the villagesoviet under its guardianship. The material dependence ofthe village soviet on the land community puts a brake on thefurther development and revitalisation of the work of theSoviet and of its sections, and on the other hand is the basis for


the taking over of the work of the village soviet by the landcommunity skhod.”38

At the Fifteenth Party Congress delegates spoke of the pres-ence of “dual power” in the countryside: the power of therural soviet, and that of the skhod (which was an assembly, be itrecalled, in which the poor and less well-off peasants carriedlittle weight).39 A resolution passed by this congress called for“an improvement in relations between the soviets and theland communities, aimed at ensuring that the former play theleading role.” 40 In practice, however, this resolution remainedineffective. Thus, a year and a half later, the Fourteenth All-Russia Congress of Soviets, meeting in May 1929, heard anofficial report which stated that “the village soviet remains. . . dependent on the land communities, receiving very largegrants from them.”41

The fight to strengthen the village soviets, despite the suc-cesses it obtained when the village soviet was provided withcertain financial resources.42 and obtained material results,remained in general an unequal struggle in which the skhodeven managed sometimes to add to its power, turning itselfinto an “electoral commission” which went so far as to drawup the list of electors to the village soviet.43 (When this hap-pened there was a reversal of the relations between the sovietand the skhod, with the latter dominating the former politi-cally, just as it often dominated it economically, by providing,for example, the salary of the secretary to the village soviet.)

The dominant role played by the traditional forms of organi-zation had considerable ideological consequences. The sys-tem of practices to which the skhod gave support underlay thereproduction of a set of contradictory ideological and politicalrelations. In particular, there were the ideas of village au-tonomy, of equality, and of solidarity within the mir.

(c) The idea of village autonomy

The fact that the mir and the skhod controlled lands, woods,smithies, mills, etc., gave rise to the illusory notion of villageautonomy, of the village existing as a world on its own,sufficient unto itself. 44


This idea erected serious obstacles to intervention in vil-lage life by organizations outside the mir. Thus, the tendencyto subordination of the village soviet to the skhod, thoughpolitically overdetermined by the role of the well-to-do peas-ants in the skhod, was inherent in the ideology of the mir. Itcould be combated only by specific forms of class struggle.

At the same time, the idea of village “autonomy” producedrelative indifference to the disparities in standard of livingbetween town and country. These were seen as “two worlds,”between which there was no common yardstick. Putting in theforeground the task of aligning the standards of living—thematerial conditions of existence—of these “two worlds”could easily be seen as signifying renunciation of the specificcharacter of village life. The inequalities between town andcountry were looked upon, to a certain extent, as being theinevitable counterpart of village “autonomy.”

To be sure, this did not rule out the advancing of “economicdemands,” but these were not formulated in terms of “reduc-ing gaps.” The tendency for the differences between condi-tions in village and in town to increase did not, in itself, giverise during the NEP period to a struggle aimed at counteringits effects. This needs to be taken into account when evaluat-ing the factors which explain why this tendency was able todevelop in that period without encountering large-scale resis-tance.

Finally, the idea of the autonomy of each village constitutedan obstacle to any “alliance” between the peasants of severalvillages in order to fight for common aims. This aspect alsocontributed to creating a situation in which the growth ofinequality between townspeople and countrypeople did notspontaneously engender struggles aimed at checking this dif-ferentiation.

In these circumstances, the struggle of the poor and middlepeasants to improve their conditions by improving the termsof exchange remained weak. Paradoxically, the relative au-tonomy of the village, which was a reality, and the depen-dence of the towns upon the countryside, which was greater atthat time than the dependence of the countryside upon thetowns, did not, as a rule, appear as a “weapon” which the


villagers could use in order to secure better conditions ofexchange and a better supply of industrial goods.

The reproduction of the ideology of village autonomy thusplayed a negative role in relation to the attempt made by theBolshevik Party to organize the struggle of the poor and mid-dle peasants for better living conditions. Of course, this rolewas only relative, not absolute. Nevertheless, the idea of au-tonomy served as a vehicle for the idea of development byrelying on one’s own resources—but the Bolshevik Party didnot lay much stress on that.

To conclude discussion of this point, it is perhaps appro-priate to justify use of the word “illusion” to characterize theidea of “village autonomy.” It was indeed an illusion, for inthe NEP period the village did depend on the town and urbanactivities for survival and economic development: it was de-pendent in respect to metals, part of its equipment, selectedseeds (whose use was beginning to become widespread), andso on. However, this dependence was still fairly secondary incharacter, so that the illusion in question corresponded to acertain material and social reality, from which it drew itsstrength. And this illusion, if not effectively combated by theParty’s political and ideological work, tended to block the pathto a real alliance between the workers and the peasants, analliance without which the poor and middle sections of therural masses could not overthrow the dominance of the richpeasants.45

(d) The idea of equality within the mir

One of the components of the peasant ideology as it wasreproduced by the skhod was the idea that all peasants were“equal” within the mir. The material basis of this idea—whatunderlay it—was the periodical redivision of land carried outby the skhod.46

However, this “equality” was, in fact, more of an illusionthan it had ever been before. We have seen already that pos-session of means of production other than the land, and offinancial resources, was a source of real inequalities, the ef-


fects of which were intensified by the political inequalitiesthat they engendered. Thus, at the head of the mir thereusually stood members of rich or well-to-do families, and thiswas especially true of the headman, the starosta, or “elder,”who played the leading role in the skhod. Given the divisionof the land without any corresponding redistribution of theinstruments of labor, and given the wear and tear suffered bythe most rudimentary of these instruments, the social andpolitical power of the rich peasants was maintained and some-times even increased.47

The very way that the commune functioned served to assistthe reproduction of egalitarian illusions. While the redistribu-tion of land actually favored the rich peasants, it also enabledthe group of middle peasants to grow stronger in accordancewith the process of social differentiation characteristic of theNEP period.

Investigations carried out during this period showed thatthe skhod continued, mainly, to function as in prerevolutionarytimes—its assemblies were usually convened and conductedby the same families as before, with the same men, or theirdescendants, in the role of starosta.48

While the idea of equality within the mir was an illusion,the presence of this idea among the peasantry could have beenused as a weapon by the Bolshevik Party to transform the mirand the skhod from within, by striving to ensure that the poorand middle peasants did in fact enjoy all the rights that theypossessed in theory. Actually, however, examples of strugglesalong these lines are few and far between. The Party soughtabove all, and without much success, to breathe life into therural soviets, for it saw the mir as an archaic institutiondoomed to wither away and incapable of serving as frameworkfor revolutionary activity. This attitude was due partly toideological reasons,49 but mainly to the circumstance that theParty’s weak basis among the peasants made it harder for it tooperate in the skhod, a purely peasant assembly, than in thesoviets, where workers, peasants, and office workers were allrepresented together.

It needs to be added that very early the Bolshevik Party


developed a tendency to treat with suspicion all “egalitarian”notions, doubtless through a one-sided interpretation ofMarx’s statements emphasizing the limits to the demand forequality and pointing out how the idea of “equal right” be-longed within the limited setting of “bourgeois right.”50 Thisone-sided interpretation was not unconnected with theideological pressure exercised by the specialists, engineers,etc., who were paid high salaries. In the case under considera-tion, it led to an inability to draw petty-bourgeois notions intothe wake of proletarian ideology and so to transform them.

(e) The associated ideas of “independenceof the farm” and “solidarity within themir

The ideology of the skhod and the mir, and the practicesreproduced by these ideological organizations, nourished twoideas which were both contradictory and interconnected: theidea of the independence of the farm assigned to a particularfamily and that of solidarity within the mir.

The first idea was linked with the division of the land of thecommune among families, which implied that a farm was an“independent” economic unit. It constituted the materialbasis of the reproduction of the patriarchal family and of itsrelations of domination and subordination, of the dominationof the young by the old, for it was to families—and in prac-tice to “heads of families”—and not to individuals, that thedivided-up land was assigned.

The idea of solidarity within the mir was materialized in thevarious obligations imposed upon the members of the landassociation and in the forms of “mutual aid” which they wereexpected to provide.

It was on the basis of this second idea, the ultimate expres-sion of which would be a decision not to redivide the land butto form (as had been allowed for by the law of 1922) agricul-tural communes, for joint cultivation of the land, that a strug-gle for socialist forms of labor and production was possiblewithin the skhod.


There did exist, in fact, quite a few examples of develop-ment of collective forms of labor and production, under theimpulsion of the poor and middle peasants, especially throughsome of the members of a commune breaking away in order toestablish a collective farm.51

On the whole, though, this movement took place in only alimited way. It was not until the end of 1927 that the BolshevikParty really began to give it backing, and even then onlyhesitantly, because it did not result in the large farms whichthe Party favored, both for reasons of “principle” and becausethey lent themselves better to mechanization.

The Bolshevik Party failed to exploit seriously the con-tradictions characteristic of peasant ideology in the NEPperiod. It sought above all to work directly upon the contradic-tion which set the poor and middle peasants against the rich,but in this way it achieved only limited results. It allowed thetraditional forms of organization to survive de facto, and whenthey broke up it was in only rare cases that this produced newcollective forms.

On this basis “traditional” ideological centers continued toexist, in barely altered forms: the patriarchal family, thechurch, the religious sects. Similarly—and this deserves spe-cial attention—the Soviet school was transformed, becomingmore and more openly bourgeois.

(f) The Soviet school and the ideology of theschool

At the village level it was the primary school that was themain center for reproducing and transforming the ideology ofthe educational system. In the first years of Soviet power, thisschool was the subject of ambitious projects for revolutionarychange.52 However, owing to lack of means, and also to resis-tance from the teachers, such projects had practically no im-pact on reality.

In 1923, two years after the beginning of the NEP, theseprojects, which had never materialized except in a few “pilotexperiments,” were put aside. In the words of Kalashnikov,


author of a work on the sociology of education published in1928: “the romanticism of the early years was channelled intothe bed of practical achievements.” 53

In other words, the exigencies of reestablishing theeconomy and of carrying out the bourgeois-democratic revolu-tion in the countryside prevailed. While in the towns “re-form’’ experiments went on in the kindergartens and the pri-mary and secondary schools,54 what predominated in the ruralareas (under the pressure of the rich and middle peasants, andof a section of the poor ones, too) was the return to “seriouseducation,” to a school of “social advancement based on selec-tion and the ideology of competition (marks, examinations) . . .leading to the restoration of the school as reproducer ofbourgeois ideology. . . .” 55 This type of school was what waswanted by the “Nepmen” and by most of the cadres of theeconomic and administrative apparatuses, and it also con-formed to the ideology of the bulk of the teachers.

In the reproduction of the conservative ideas that domi-nated the village in the NEP period, the school that wasreturning to life 56 played its part along with the family, thechurch, the mir, and the skhod, and even with the economicorganizations that had been penetrated by elements that werecarriers of bourgeois ideology.

The ideas that dominated the Soviet village at that timewere not, of course, held by all the peasants (for a section ofthe middle and poor peasants adhered to the ideas ofsocialism, even if they did not join the Party), but neverthelessthey did ensure, broadly, the “authority” of the rich and pow-erful among the peasants and “respect” for the social hierar-chy of the village. The ground was, therefore, relatively favor-able for the continued influence of petty-bourgeois ideas,57

since the Bolshevik Party, through failing to treat correctly thecontradictions that existed among the peasantry, developedonly very slowly its implantation in the countryside. Finally,from 1928 on, the Soviet government found itself confrontedwith contradictions which it could not cope with and whichbecame exacerbated as a result of the specific form of indus-trialization to which the country was increasingly committed.


Thereafter, the conditions were ripe for the explosion of thefinal crisis of the NEP. However, the factor which acted asthe motive force in this crisis was not to be found among thepeasantry: it was constituted by the contradictions inthe towns and by the way in which these were met.

Notes

1. See volume I of the present work, especially pp. 355 ff.2. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, p. 356.3. Ibid., vol. 7, pp. 356–357.4. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. II, p. 481.5. Ibid., vol. II, p. 481, and T. H. Rigby, Communist Party Member-

ship in the USSR, 1917–1967, pp. 52, 162. Even if, instead ofconsidering actual class situation, we take class origin as thecriterion, we find that Party members of peasant origin made upno more than 20 percent of the total (see Rigby).

6. Rigby, Communist Party Membership, p. 189.7. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 489.8. Rigby, Communist Party Membership, p. 170.9. A. Gaister and A. Levin, article on the composition of the Party’s

rural organizations in Bolshevik, nos. 9–10 (1929), pp. 75–90, andRigby, Communist Party Membership, pp. 170, 171.

10. Rigby, Communist Party Membership, p. 181.11. K.P.S.S. v resolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 489–490.12. In the Smolensk archives (which fell into the hands of the Ger-

man forces and then were taken over by the American army andtransferred to the United States, where they were made availableto researchers: National Archives Microfilm Publication no. T–87, National Archives, Washington, D.C.), we find much informa-tion about the working of the Party in the country and town, andabout the various problems that arose in the Smolensk regionbetween 1917 and 1941. In particular, there are results of inves-tigations, and reports, which show what the situation was in theBolshevik Party during the NEP period. Merle Fainsod repro-duces a small part of this documentation in Smolensk UnderSoviet Rule: on what is said here see pp. 139 ff.

13. Taking the Party as a whole, the statistics of the purges of 1929–1930 show that the most frequent reason given for expulsion,


accounting for 22 percent of cases, was “defects in private lifeand behaviour,’’ while 17 percent of those expelled suffered thisfate owing to their “passivity,” and 17 percent because they were“hostile elements or connected with such.” “Criminal conduct”was the trouble in 12 percent of cases, and “violation of Partydiscipline” in another 12 percent. For 22 percent of cases thereasons for expulsion were not specified (Rigby, CommunistParty Membership, p. 180)

14. Stalin, Works, vol. 6, pp. 327 ff.15. At that time many of these organizations were not led by Party

members, and it sometimes happened that they supported viewsor demands that the Party did not approve of.

16. Stalin, Works, vol. 6, pp. 333–334.17. Ibid., vol. 6, pp. 315 ff.

19. Ibid., vol. 6, pp. 324–325.20. See the resolution on “Immediate Tasks of Work in the Rural

Areas’’ adopted by the plenum of October 25–27, 1924, inK.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, pp. 906 ff.

21. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, p. 127.22. Ibid., vol. 7, p. 129.23. “Iz istorii partiinogo stroitelstva,” in Partiinaya Zhizn, no. 20

(1957), pp. 80-96, quoted by O. Narkiewicz, The Making of theSoviet State Apparatus, pp. 69; 76, n. 16.

24. See above, pp. 175 ff.25. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, pp. 185–186.26. Ibid., vol. 7, p. 186.27. Narkiewicz, Making, p. 7228. I. Bogovoi, “Perevybory sovyetov v derevne i rasshirenii demo-

kratii,” in Bolshevik, nos. 9–10 (1926), pp. 38–44, quoted in Nar-kiewicz, Making, pp. 71–72.

29. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, p. 193.30. Ibid., vol. 7 , p. 179.31. Quoted in Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, p. 220.32. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, p. 250. On the mir, see

volume I of the present work, pp. 78, 85, 213 ff., 236 ff., 440, 517.33. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, pp. 250–251.34. Stalin, Works, vol. 6, p. 323.35. The waters and woods, having been nationalized, be-

longed legally to the state, but the land associations continued to disposeof them, as they did also of the property of the former landown-

18. Ibid., vol. 6, p. 322.


ers. The cultivated lands were assigned by the land associationsto the families that worked them. The woods and uncultivatedlands were not distributed but made freely available for use,subject to rules laid down by the skhod.

36. See notes 3 to 7, p. 244, of Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2.37. Ibid., p. 346.38. M. Rezunov, Selskie sovyety i zemelnye obshchestva, pp. 33–34;

Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, p. 247.39. XV-y Syezd VKP(b), vol. 2 (1962), p. 1281; and Carr and Davies,

Foundations, vol. 2, p. 255.40. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 366-367.41. XIV-y Vserossiisky Syezd Sovyetov, no. 15 (1929), p. 14; and

Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, p. 247.42. It will be observed that, four years after Stalin had issued the call,

the slogan of strengthening the financial resources of the ruralsoviets had remained almost without effect. In May 1929 theFourteenth All-Russia Congress of Soviets was still asking forthese rural soviets to be provided with a budgetary system (Carrand Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, p. 258).

43. Ibid., p. 247, n. 8, quoting Sovyetskoye Stroitelstvo, no. 12 (29)(December 1928), p. 100.

44. The word mir, meaning the village community, although itsetymology is not the same as that of mir meaning “the world,”calls the latter to mind, and these two words were frequentlyconfused.

45. Lenin laid stress on this idea, especially in the preparations forthe Second Congress of the Communist International (see “Pre-liminary Draft Theses on the Agrarian Question, for the SecondComintern Congress,” in Lenin, CW, vol. 31, pp. 152–164).

46. On the legal foundations of the skhod’s activity, see volume I ofthe present work.

47. Y. Taniuchi, The Village Gathering in Russia in the Mid–1920s,especially pp. 21–22; and Narkiewicz, Making, p. 125.

48. Taniuchi, Village, p. 27; and S. Zhdanovich, “Selskiye sovyety:zemelniye obshchestva,” in Bolshevik, no. 6 (1928).

49. See volume I of the present work, particularly pp. 214–215.50. Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme,” in Marx and Engels,

Selected Works in Three Volumes, vol. 2, p. 18.51. See Zhdanovich, “Selskiye sovyety,” and Narkiewicz, Making, p.

127; also above, p. 100.52. See volume I of the present work, pp. 168–169.


53. Quoted in D. Lindenberg, L’lnternationale communiste et l’écolede classe, p. 293.

54. In those days there was no hesitation in borrowing pedagogicaldoctrines from Dewey, Decroly, and Kerschensteiner, whosedisciples in the Soviet Union were also inspired by the experi-ments of the Social Democrats in Germany (ibid., p. 295).

55. Ibid., p. 295.56. In 1928 and 1929, in connection with the offensive against the

kulaks and the slogan of “cultural revolution” that was issued atthat time, the NEP-period type of school came under vigorouscriticism. Resolutions condemning it were even passed. Butthese condemnations remained on paper from 1930–1931 on thetasks of “economic construction” carried the day, and even thepedagogical experiments were soon abandoned. There was areturn to the most traditional of bourgeois forms in the educa-tional sphere.

57. Even as late as 1926, in certain regions, such as Smolensk, post-ers were clandestinely stuck up which appear to have beeninspired by socialist-revolutionary ideas, although the generalattitude of the peasants toward the Soviet government was re-garded as being “good” (Fainsod, Smolensk, p. 123, quoting theSmolensk Archives: VKP 249, p. 203).

187

Part 3.The contradictions and class struggle inthe industrial and urban sectors

The “procurement crisis” may look as though it was aninternal crisis of Soviet agriculture. Interpreted in this way, itseems to have been due, fundamentally, to the state of therelations between classes and of the productive forces in thecountryside toward the end of the 1920s: the relations be-tween classes were marked by the dominant position held bythe kulaks at that time, which enabled them to dictate theirconditions for supplying food to the towns, and the productiveforces in agriculture which had reached a “ceiling” that couldbe surpassed only by means of a rapid change in the condi-tions of production—by mechanization of agricultural work,which, if it was not to benefit mainly the kulaks, requiredcollectivization. According to this way of seeing the problem,the “procurement crisis” necessarily entailed the “emergencymeasures,” followed by a rapid process of collectivization,which one had to be ready to impose on the peasants shouldthey prove unwilling to accept it voluntarily—hence the thesisof the “economic necessity” of a “revolution from above.” 1

This “economistic” interpretation of the procurement crisisassumes that the NEP was not a road that allowed the middlepeasants to assume really the central position in the coun-tryside; that it did not enable the Soviet government to help thepoor and middle peasants to improve their conditions of pro-duction while gradually taking the road of cooperation andcollectivization; or else that “economic exigencies” made itimpossible to show patience in dealing with the peasantry.

As we have seen, this “economistic” interpretation is false.2At the end of the 1920s the kulaks did not hold a dominanteconomic position in the countryside and production by the


poor and middle peasants could have been increased consid-erably by helping these peasants to organize themselves andby following a different policy with respect to supplies andprices.

The procurement crisis was not a crisis inherent in agricul-ture, but a crisis of relations between town and country due tomistakes committed in the practice of the worker-peasant al-liance. This crisis was bound up with the internal contradic-tions of the industrial and urban sectors, the fashion in whichthese contradictions were understood, and the way withwhich they were dealt.

Notes

1. This “economistic” thesis is usually complemented by a thesisregarding the “military necessities” dictated by the internationalsituation, both of these theses being upheld at the present time inthe USSR (see, e.g., Istoriya KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. IV, pt. 2,p. 593). The “economistic” thesis is also defended in West Ger-many by W. Hofmann, in Die Arbeitsverfassung der Soviet Union,p. 8, and Stalinismus und Antikommunismus, p. 34 (quoted by R.Lorenz, Sozialgeschichte der Sowjetunion 1917–1945, p. 348). Itcoincides with the position of J. Elleinstein, in his Histoire del’URSS, vol. 2: Le Socialisme dans un seul pays (1922–1939), p.118, who adds, however, that: “The whole problem lay in decid-ing the pace at which this programme was to be carried out, andthe methods to be employed.”

2. Furthermore, as is known, neither the emergency measures norcollectivization, as it was carried out, enabled the difficulties inagriculture to be quickly overcome: on the contrary, agriculturalproduction declined and stagnated for more than ten years.

189

1. The direct manifestations of thecontradictions in the industrial and urban sectors

The internal contradictions of the industrial and urban sec-tors manifested themselves directly in the spheres of prices,wages, accumulation, and currency. The phenomena in ques-tion were not, of course, due solely to these contradictions, theresults of which need to be analyzed, but also resulted from aparticular policy that was followed. This in its turn was aconsequence of the ways in which reality was perceived—ofthe class struggles, that is, that were waged around real rela-tions and the ways in which these struggles were perceived.In the present chapter we shall confine ourselves to describ-ing the direct effects of the contradictions and the way withwhich these were dealt.

I. Selling price and cost of production inindustry

One of the immediate purposes of the NEP was to improvethe living conditions of the peasant masses and strengthen theconditions under which the poor and middle peasants carriedon their farming. By realizing this aim it was hoped to consoli-date the worker-peasant alliance, reduce the economic, politi-cal, and ideological roles played by the kulaks, and createconditions favorable to the development of cooperatives andof large-scale collectivization.

Among the economic conditions required for the realizationof this aim was a closing of the “scissors,” by lowering theprices of industrial goods and supplying the countryside with


the industrial goods the peasant masses needed. As we haveseen, this aim had been attained only partially and provision-ally, and toward the end of the NEP period there was even aserious setback to its realization.1

An important point needs to be made here: in 1928–1929the retail prices of industrial goods, which until then hadbeen falling, started to rise. If the “scissors” still tended toclose, this was due to the fact that agricultural prices wererising faster than industrial prices.2

The rise in industrial prices did not accord with the “aims ofthe price policy.” It resulted, in the first place, from an in-crease in demand to which no adequate increase in supplycorresponded. The “inflationary” nature of the increase inindustrial retail prices is clearly shown by the fact that itoccurred despite a fall in industrial wholesale prices.3 Thisfall was dictated to the state-owned industries by a policystill aimed at “closing the scissors” and stabilizing prices.

After 1926–1927 an imbalance began to appear. Already inthat year the percentage increase in the cash income of thepopulation exceeded that of the increase in industrial productsavailable for sale by 3.8 points.4 The process thus begun con-tinued in the following year, which explains why a new periodthen opened in the evolution of prices.

As we know, the imbalance between the supply of anddemand for industrial products affected the peasantry morethan any other section.

The situation we have described was bound up with thecontradictions in the industrial policy pursued by the Bol-shevik Party from 1926 on. This accorded increasing priorityto growth in accumulation and production by heavy industry,while at the same time increasing urban incomes, especiallywages. On the one hand, this was a source of increased de-mand to which there was no adequate material counterpart.On the other hand, for lack of a parallel increase in the produc-tivity of labor, costs of production in industry were swollen,and this prevented the simultaneous realization of two aimswhich were then being pursued by the Soviet government: anincrease in industry’s capacity to finance a substantial propor-


tion of investment, which was being increased at a rapid rate,and continued pursuit of the policy of reducing the productioncosts and the wholesale prices of industrial goods.

The reduction in costs of production in industry was, on thewhole, much less than had been provided for by the plans, andmuch less than was needed to meet the requirements of thepolicy being followed in the sphere of wholesale prices andthe financing of investment in industry. The following tableillustrates the problems that arose:

Increase or reduction of industrial costs(percentage of previous year) 5

1925–1926 1926–1927 1927–1928 1928–1929Planned – 7 – 5 – 6 – 7Realized + 1.7 – 1.8 – 5.1 – 4 to 4.5

A considerable proportion of the reduction of costs of pro-duction in industry was due either to factors external to indus-try (reduction in costs of raw materials, or in taxes) or toaccounting adjustments (calculation of depreciation and over-head charges),6 so that the share represented by wages in costsof production tended to increase. It should be noted that in1926–1927 average cost of production in industry was twiceas high as prewar, whereas the wholesale prices of industrialproducts had not reached this level.7 From this followed bothindustry’s low degree of capacity to finance its own invest-ments and the limits bounding the policy of reducing indus-trial wholesale prices.

The high level of costs of production was due to some extentto the inflation in the members of administrative personnel incharge of production units, enterprises, and trusts. This phe-nomenon was denounced by the Party, which issued calls for a“struggle against bureaucracy.” In practice, however, no such“struggle” was waged by the working masses. It was left toother administrative organs, which were far from effective incarrying out this task. Moreover, the attempts made tostrengthen controls, by developing systems of accounting andreporting to the planning organs and establishing departmentsfor studying and analyzing the time taken to produce goods,


increased the burden of administration in the state industrialsector, while the result hoped for from these innovations werefar from being achieved.

However, the decisive factor in the increase in costs ofproduction in industry during this period was the increase inwages which was not accompanied by comparable increasesin output or productivity.

II. Wages and productivity of labor inindustry

According to the figures given by Stalin in the politicalreport of the CC to the Fifteenth Party Congress, the averagereal wage (social services included) in 1926–1927 was 128.4percent that of prewar.8 In the same period, productivity oflabor in industry had not [reached] the 1913 level.9 During the nexttwo years the situation stayed approximately the same, with wagesand productivity in industry increasing at roughly the samepace.10

The increase in wages, despite the presence of a considera-ble body of unemployed toward the end of the NEP period,testifies to the political role that the working class now played.But, at the same time, the relation between this increase andthe increase in productivity testifies to the contradictions inthe economic policy then being followed. At a time when whatwas being emphasized was the need to increase accumulationmainly from industry’s own resources, while narrowing the“scissors” between industrial and agricultural prices, the in-crease in the cost of wages borne by industrial productionprevented either of these aims from being realized.

As regards relations between the working class and thepeasantry, the development just described had negative con-sequences: it helped to widen, to the disadvantage of thepeasants (most of whom had a standard of living lower thanthat of the workers), the disparity between economic condi-tions in town and country. From 1928 on this disparity was


still further widened by the shortage of industrial goods andthe priority given to the towns (except for short periods andonly very locally) in the distribution of manufactured prod-ucts.

In this way, contradictions developed which at first man-ifested themselves in the form of a process of inflation.

III. The inflationary process and itsimmediate origins

The immediate origins of the inflationary process are nothard to detect. They lie in the increase in investments andunproductive expenditure which was both rapid and out ofproportion with the “financial results” realized by the statesector. This can be illustrated by certain figures.

Between 1925–1926 (the first year of the “reconstructionperiod”) and 1928–1929, the total amount of budgetary ex-penditure, in current roubles, more than doubled,11 whichmeant an increase of 30 percent each year.

In the same years, the increase in the volume of industrialproduction destined for consumption and derived from “cen-sus industry”12 slowed down. This production, which in-creased by 38 percent in 1926, increased by only about 18percent in 1927 and in 1928. 13 It was still a remarkableincrease—but not enough to cope with the increase in cashincomes, especially since there was a slowing-down in pro-duction by small-scale industry after 1927–1928.14

Altogether, in contrast to an increase of 34 percent inwages between 1925–1926 and 1927–1928, a fresh increase ofabout 14 percent in the following year,15 and to the increasementioned in budgetary expenditure, real national incomewas increasing at a much slower pace—a little over 7 percentper year between 1925–1926 and 1928–1929.16

Thus, the last years of the NEP period were marked by anincreasing gap between the growth in distributed income andthe growth in the quantity of goods available for consumption.


The existence of this gap was closely connected with the rapidincrease in gross investment in the state sector and with theway in which this investment was financed.

Investments, not all of which passed through the budget,increased 2.75 times between 1925–1926 and 1929.17 Thelarger part of these investments would not result in increasedproduction until several years had gone by. They thereforeinvolved outlays of cash which, for the time being, had nocounterpart in production. Here was the hub of the inflation-ary process, for the state and cooperative sector provided toan ever smaller extent for its own expanded reproduction—aswe can see clearly when we examine the evolution of profits instate industry, and compare the resources which it contributedto the financial system with those it drew from it.

Between 1924–1925 and 1926–1927, net profits (i.e., thedifference between the profits and the losses of the variousindustrial enterprises) evolved as follows:

Net balance of profits from state industries 18

(in millions of roubles)1924–1925 1925–1926 1926–1927

364 536 539

The increase was substantial in 1925–1926, but minimal in1926–1927. In any case, these amounts were less and lessadequate to meet the needs of financing the industrial sector.Down to 1924–1925 the latter had supplied to the financialsystem resources (in taxes, payments of profits into the ex-chequer, subscriptions to state loans, payments into the statebank, etc.) which were almost equivalent to those it obtainedfrom the financial system in order to cover its needs. In thatyear, the net contribution of the financial system to the needsof the industrial sector came to only 20 million roubles, or 11.6
percent of the amount contributed by industry to the financialsystem.19
After 1925–1926, when the period of reconstruction and thepolicy of industrialization began, the situation was completelytransformed. In 1926–1927 the financial system’s contribution


to the needs of the industrial sector exceeded the contributionof industry to the financial system by nearly 35 percent, andthereafter the latter furnished even larger resources to indus-try. Current financial resources proved inadequate, and it wasnecessary to issue paper money. A rapid increase took place inthe amount of money in circulation, which rose from 1,157million roubles on July 1, 1926, to 2,213 million roubles onJuly 1, 1929.20 This increase was out of all proportion to theincrease in the national income. It meant a real inflation of thecurrency, which gave rise to important economic imbalancesand political contradictions.

What has been described here was due, of course, to deeperunderlying social contradictions, and resulted from the waywith which these contradictions were dealt. It is these re-alities which must now be analyzed.

Notes

1. See above, pp. 145 ff., 150 ff.2. In a single year, the former rose by 17.2 percent and the latter by

2.5 percent.3. During the years under consideration here the wholesale prices

of industrial goods fell regularly, but more and more slowly (in1928–1929 their index stood at 185.3, with 1913 as 100). The gapbetween the index of industrial retail prices and wholesale pricestended to close until 1927–1928, but then opened again in1928–1929, which shows that there was a demand in excess ofsupply, at the prices then being asked. For the evolution ofindustrial wholesale prices, see E. Zaleski, Planning, p. 398.

4. Calculated from Table 33 in S. Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p.201, quoting the figures of G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, Desyat let,pp. 76–77.

5. From Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 954. Thesewriters quote the Soviet sources from which their table wascompiled.

6. See, for example, the evolution of the factors in costs of produc-tion in industry shown in ibid., p. 345, n. 8.

7. Byulleten Konyunkturnogo Instituta, nos. 11–12 (1927); Osnov-


noye Problemy Kontrolnykh Tsifry (1929–1930), p. 158; A.Baykov, The Soviet Economic System, pp. 123 ff.

8. Stalin, Works, vol. 10, p. 322.9. I. Lapidus and K. Ostrovityanov, Outline of Political Economy,

p. 127.10. Ekonomicheskoye Obozreniye, no. 10 (1929), p. 143; no. 12

(1929), p. 204; and Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, pp.957, 958 (and also p. 539). Actually, from January 1928 on the wayin which real wages were calculated was less and less relevant tothe true conditions of the working class. These calculations werebased on the official price level, but, starting in 1928, suppliesbecame irregular, a black market developed, and workers wereobliged to buy many of the goods they needed at prices whichwere higher than in the “socialized” sector. It is to be observedthat whereas in January 1927 the disparity between the priceindices in the socialized and private sectors was 30 points(1913=100), this disparity spread to 50 points in January 1928and to 84 in January 1929 (ibid., p. 964)

11. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 974.12. “Census industry” comprised those industrial production units

which employed 16 or more workers, if they used mechanicalmotive power, and 30 or more workers if they were without suchpower. Units of production outside this category constituted“small-scale industry.” There were, however, some exceptions tothis criterion of classification.

13. Baykov, The Soviet Economic System, p. 121; Carr and Davies,Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 948.

14. I shall come back to this question in the next chapter.15. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 978.16. Calculated from ibid., p. 977, and Bettelheim, La Planification

soviétique, p. 268.17. Proportions calculated by Bettelheim, ibid., p. 268.18. Baykov, The Soviet Economic System, p. 118.19. Ibid., p. 119.20. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 976.

197

2. The contradictions between the privatesector and the state sector in industry and trade

Between 1921 and 1925 the policy of development andaccumulation in the state sector of industry laid down limitedobjectives which this sector was capable of accomplishingmainly from its own resources. During this period the Bol-shevik Party managed to cope, without too much difficulty,with the contradictions that opposed the private sector to thestate sector in industry and trade. The state sector developed,as a whole, faster than the private sector, and strengthenedpositions which, by and large, were already dominant. Thisconsolidation was due principally to the dynamism shown bythe state sector, which also enjoyed priority support from thebanks. In that period the fundamental principles of the NEPwere respected, even though in some towns the local au-thorities introduced regulations which more or less paralyzedthe private sector.1 From the end of 1925 there was a change.The efforts made to develop the state sector of industry wereincreased, and tended (contrary to the resolutions of the Par-ty’s congresses and conferences) to be concentrated in a one-sided way upon heavy industry and upon projects which re-quired long periods of construction before entering the phaseof production. Furthermore, as we have seen, the scale of thiseffort at development called for financial resources that ex-ceeded what state industry and trade could mobilize fromtheir own resources; therefore, imbalances between supplyand demand were created, and inflationary pressure built up.Under these conditions, the private sector in industry andtrade was placed in an exceptionally advantageous position.

The shortage of goods enabled private traders to increasetheir selling prices, while the prices they paid for supplies


obtained from the state sector fell as a result of the continuingpolicy of reducing industrial wholesale prices. Thus, privatetrade was able to increase its profits to a considerable extentby appropriating a growing fraction of the value produced inthe state sector.

Private industry also profited from the goods shortage, byincreasing its selling prices while continuing to receive someof its means of production relatively cheaply from the statesector of industry.

Thus, at the very moment when the gap was wideningseriously between the volume of financial resources directly atthe disposal of state-owned industry and what was needed inorder to attain the investment aims laid down for it, profits inthe private sector of industry and trade were tending to risesharply. Moreover, this sector was using material resourceswhich were, to an increasing extent, lacking in the state sector.Although the NEP was not officially abandoned, in order tocope with this situation, from 1926 on ever more numerousmeasures were taken to cut down the activity and resources ofthe private sector in industry and trade.

Some of these measures were financial, taking the form ofincreased taxes and forced loans exacted from the privateindustrialists and traders. The amounts taken from them inthis way rose from 91 million roubles in 1925–1926 to 191million in 1926–1927.2 Other measures assumed the form ofregulations—even penal measures, on the ground that manytraders and industrialists were violating Soviet law. After 1926the administrative organs responsible for approving leases andconcessions and issuing patents withdrew some of the au-thorizations they had previously granted.

However, these measures were introduced without anyoverall plan, and, in particular, without the state and coop-erative sector being fully in a position to take the place of theprivate enterprises whose activity was being brought to a halt.Consequently, there was a worsening of the shortages fromwhich the population suffered, and in the unsatisfactory sup-ply of goods to certain localities and regions. This deteriora-


tion affected principally the rural areas. In order to appreciatewhat it meant we must examine some figures.

I. The different forms of ownership inindustry and how they evolved

Soviet industrial statistics of the NEP period distinguishedbetween four “sectors,” in accordance with type of owner-ship of enterprises: state, cooperative, private, or foreign-concession.

In census industry, on the eve of the final crisis of the NEP(1926–1927), the state sector was predominant, followed, along way behind, by the cooperative sector. In percentages,production by the different sectors of census industry 3 was asfollows:

Percentages of gross production, in current prices,furnished by the sectors of census industry

in 1926–1927 4

State industry 91.3Cooperative industry 6.4Private industry 1.8Industry operated as

foreign concessions 0.5

In census industry the state and cooperative sectors thuspredominated massively. As a result, the Soviet governmentpossessed, up to a certain point, the power to dictate—momentarily, at least—a reduction in the wholesale prices ofmost industrial products, despite the inflation of costs and ofdemand. Actually, this power was far from being “absolute”:its effect was mainly to delay increases in wholesale prices ofindustrial products. It is to be observed that by 1928–1929, asa result of the measures taken from 1926 on, the place oc-cupied by the nonstate sectors in census industry was reducedto less than 1 percent.


In small-scale industry the nonstate sector played a majorrole in 1926–1927. Here are the figures:

Percentages of gross production, in current prices,furnished by the sectors of small-scale industry

in 1926–1927

State industry 2Cooperative industry 19Private industry 79

The big place occupied by private industry prevented theSoviet government from exercising sufficient control over theprices of its products. Some additional information is called forhere:

1. In 1926–1927 the value of private industry’s productionwas far from negligible. Taking industry as a whole, itamounted to 4,391 million in current roubles, which repre-sented about 19.7 percent of that year’s productions.6

2. However—and this is a vital point—within private indus-try, production was mainly handicraft production and thus notbased upon the exploitation of wage labor. According to astudy by the economist D. Shapiro, 85 percent of the small-scale enterprises employed no wage workers.7

3. From the angle of employment, small-scale industryplayed a considerable role,8 but the earnings of the craftsmencontributed little to the inflation of demand: their incomeswere of the same order as those of the peasants. A largeproportion of small-scale industry was not “urban” but“rural”: it was an important complement to the urban sectorof industry, but it was also in competition with the latter.

As we know, the principle governing the policy followedduring the NEP period was favorable to small-scale industry.This orientation was inspired by what Lenin wrote at thebeginning of the NEP, when he emphasized the need for“generating the utmost local initiative in economicdevelopment—in the gubernias, still more in the uyezds, stillmore in the volosts and villages—for the special purpose ofimmediately improving peasant farming, even if by ‘small’

5


means, on a small scale, helping it by developing small localindustry.’ He pointed out that moving on to a further stagewould necessitate the fulfillment of a number of conditions, inparticular a large-scale development of electric power produc-tion, which would itself demand a period of at least ten yearsto carry out the initial phase of the electrification plan.9 In1926, and even in 1928, they were still a very long way fromhaving fulfilled this condition, and small-scale industry wasstill absolutely indispensable.

The small-scale industry of the NEP period assumed ex-tremely diverse forms: handicraft, private capitalist (withincertain limits), or directed by local organizations (the mir, orthe rural or district soviet). Lenin was, above all, in favor of thelast. 10 He also favored “small commodity-producers’ co-operatives,” which, he said, were “the predominant and typi-cal form in a small-peasant country.”11

Down to 192–1927 the development of small-scale indus-try encountered only relatively limited hindrances, the pur-pose of which was to prevent the spread of a private industrialsector of a truly capitalist sort. However, the aid given tosmall-scale industry remained slight, and small producers’cooperatives and the initiatives of local organizations de-veloped only slowly—mainly, under the authority of the “landassociations”.

Actually, small-scale industry, and handicraft industry inparticular, had not recovered its prewar level of production.12

Craft enterprises had difficulty in getting supplies, owing tocompetition from state-owned industry, which enjoyed a cer-tain priority. In this matter the policy recommended by Leninwas not fully implemented, and the practices which de-veloped from 1926 on departed farther and farther from thatpolicy. This made it increasingly difficult for the peasants toobtain consumer goods and small items of farm equipment.

As principle, however, Lenin’s directives remained theorder of the day right down to 1927. Thus, in May of that yearthe Sovnarkom denounced “the unpardonable negligenceshown by the public economic services in face of the problemsof small-scale industry and the handicrafts.”13 Nevertheless,


the “problems” in question were not solved. In fact, the smallenterprises found themselves increasingly up against the willto dominate shown by the heads of state-owned industry. Thelatter fought to increase their supplies, their markets, and theprofits of the enterprises they directed. In this fight they en-joyed the support of the economic administrative services,whose officials were closely linked with the leadership of thestate enterprises.

Starting in 1927–1928, regardless of the resolutions of-ficially adopted in favor of small-scale industry and the handi-crafts, the organs of the economic administration took a seriesof measures whose effect would deprive small-scale industryof an increasing proportion of the raw materials it had beenreceiving until then, and would cause the complete closure ofsome of the small production units. This slowing-down ofproduction by small-scale industry took place without anypreparation, and under conditions which aggravated the dif-ficulties of agriculture, since the activities of the ruralcraftsmen had helped and stimulated agricultural productionand exchange.

In practice, the final phase of the NEP period was increas-ingly marked by the dominance of a type of industrial de-velopment that was centered on large-scale industry. This de-velopment was profoundly different from what Lenin hadrecommended for decades: it was costlier in terms of theinvestment required, demanded much longer constructionperiods, was qualitatively less diversified, and entailed biggertransport costs.

The dominance of this type of industrial development wassupported by the trade unions, which saw in it the guaranteeof an increase in the number of wage workers and, as has beenmentioned, it was also favored by the heads of the large-scaleenterprises and the state administration. The pressure exer-cised in favor of this line of development assumed severalideological forms. The “superiority” of large-scale industrywas regularly invoked, together with the idea that an enlarge-ment of the working class would ensure consolidation of thedictatorship of the proletariat. The need for struggle against


the petty bourgeoisie was also a favorite theme of the partisansof large-scale industry. Thus, in this period many small pro-ducers were doomed to unemployment, while the administra-tive apparatus was being enlarged and the power of the headsof large-scale industry increased.

Between 1927 and the end of 1929,14 then, the growingdifficulties of small-scale industry resulted mainly from thepractices of the state organs and the heads of large-scale en-terprises, and not from the policy which had been affirmed bythe Soviet government in 1927. These difficulties were con-nected with a class struggle which set the nascent statebourgeoisie, indifferent to the needs of the masses, against thesmall producers, and the craftsmen in particular. Thus, thepolicy actually followed was in contradiction with the princi-ples proclaimed, and it enabled large-scale industry to putrural industry in a more and more awkward situation, by re-ducing the peasants’ opportunities for obtaining supplies andby contributing to the gravity of the final crisis of the NEP.Here, too, this crisis is seen to be bound up with the de factoabandonment of some of the principles of the New EconomicPolicy.

II. The different forms of ownership in thesphere of trade, and how they evolved

During the NEP period trade also was shared among several“sectors.”

In wholesale trade private enterprises realized only 5.1 per-cent of the total turnover in 1926–1927, and this share wasquickly reduced in the following years. The major part ofwholesale trade was in the hands of the state and cooperativeorgans, which accounted for 50.2 and 44.7 percent, respec-tively, of the total turnover in 1926-1927.15

As for retail trade, the share taken by the private sector wasstill an important one in 1926–1927. It then stood at 36.9percent: cooperative trade dominated this sphere, with 49.8


percent of the turnover, while state trading activity played aminor role.16 In retail trade, moreover, the cooperatives wereless subject to control than in the sphere of wholesale trade.

In an inflationary situation the relatively important roleplayed by private retail trade meant that reductions inwholesale prices brought little benefit to consumers. Theyears 1922–1928 even saw the retail prices of industrial goodsrising while wholesale prices were still falling. These prac-tices on the part of private traders explain, to some extent, theadministrative decisions to close down a number of privatesales points and the decline to 13.5 percent in 1928–1929 ofthe “private” share of the retail trade turnover.17

Here, too, the measures were taken without anypreparation—either by withdrawing licenses to trade or bycreating difficulties for transport by rail of goods being mar-keted by private traders. From 1926-1927 on, tens ofthousands of “commercial units” disappeared in this way,most of them being pedlars or petty itinerant merchants whomainly served the rural areas. In the RSFSR alone the numberof “private commercial units” declined from 226,760 in1926–1927 to 159,254 in 1927–1928; but the number of stateand cooperative “commercial units” also declined in the sameperiod.18 This development contributed to the worsening ofrelations between town and country and to the procurementcrisis. It was also one of the factors in the final crisis of NEP.

The measures taken to close down “sales points” withoutreplacing them were contrary to the policy which had beenofficially proclaimed. Not only had the Thirteenth Party Con-gress, in May 1924, already warned against measures taken inrelation to private trade which would hinder the developmentof exchange19 and perpetuate, or even widen, the “blankspaces,” 20 but these same warnings had been included in aresolution of the CC which met in February 1927.21 Theywere repeated by the Fifteenth Congress in December 1927,which stressed that the ousting of private trade by state andcooperative trade must be adapted to the material and organi-zational capacities of these forms of trade, so as not to cause abreak in the exchange network or to interrupt the provision ofsupplies.22


In practice these warnings were ignored, partly for ideolog-ical reasons (the elimination of private trade, like that of pri-vate industry, even if their services were not replaced, wasthen regarded as a development of socialist economic forms23

and partly through the pressure exercised by the heads of thestate trading organs. The latter tended to boost the role andimportance of the organs in which they worked by arrangingfor the maximum quantity of goods to be handled by theseorgans and without concerning themselves with the more orless balanced distribution of these goods, especially betweentown and country.

Thus, from 1926 on, a de facto retreat from the NEP graduallytook place in trade and industry. This retreat proceeded as anobjective process that was largely independent of the deci-sions taken by the highest authorities of the Bolshevik Party.Under these conditions, the process went forward withoutpreparation, and resulted in effects prejudicial to theworker-peasant alliance as well as to the supply of industrialgoods to the rural areas. All this contributed to increase thedimensions of the procurement crisis which broke out in1927–1928.

III. The factors determining theabandonment of the NEP in tradeand industry from 1926 on

The turn made in 1926 in the Bolshevik Party’s practicewith regard to private industry and trade corresponded to anaccentuation of the social contradictions and the class strug-gle. This accentuation had a number of aspects.

1. A fundamental aspect was the sharpening of the con-tradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat,through the growing hostility of wide sections of the workingclass towards the “Nepmen.” This hostility was stimulated bythe rise in retail prices which occurred in the private sectorand the increases in speculators’ profits resulting from theseprice-rises. In the industrial sector the struggle between the


workers employed in private enterprises and their capitalistemployers was a permanent factor, but there is no obviousevidence that the struggle in this sphere was becoming moreacute. In any case, only a very small fraction of the Sovietworking class worked in the private sector. They numberedbetween 150,000 and 180,000, and made up only 4.2 percentof the membership of the trade unions, at a time when 88percent of the working class was organized in trade unions.24

2. Another aspect of the accentuation of class struggles was the development of a growing contradiction between thebourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie in private industry andtrade, on the one hand, and, on the other, the heads of state-owned industry. The latter were obliged to accomplish thetasks assigned to them by the plans for industrial develop-ment, and yet the financial and material means put at theirdisposal were insignificant. The reduction, or complete elimi-nation, of the private sector thus looked to them like a way ofenabling the state-owned enterprises to take over the re-sources possessed by the private industrialists and traders,and also by the craftsmen.

3. From 1926 on an increasingly acute contradiction de-veloped between the content of the industrial plans—theirscope, the priorities they laid down, the techniques theyfavored—and the continuation of the NEP, which would haverequired the adoption of industrial plans with a different con-tent.

The development of this last contradiction played a decisiverole in aggravating those previously mentioned, but it haditself a twofold class significance:

1. On the ideological plane, a conception of industrializa-tion was increasingly emphasized which was influenced bythe capitalist forms of industrialization. This was connectedwith the changes then being undergone by the Bolshevikideological formation. The orientation proposed by Leninconcerning the role to be played (at least for some decades) bysmall-scale industry, local organizations, and relatively simpletechniques was gradually lost sight of. Also forgotten wereLenin’s views regarding the need to work out plans which


took account of the needs of the masses and the materialassets actually available, especially in the form of agricul-tural products.25

Instead of an industrialization plan in conformity with theseindications, the conception which increasingly prevailed gaveone-sided priority to large-scale industry, heavy industry, andthe “most up-to-date” techniques. It thrust the needs of themasses into the background, giving ever greater priority toaccumulation, which the plans sought to “maximize,” withoutreally taking account of the demands of the development ofagriculture and of the balance of exchange between town andcountry, the material basis of the worker-peasant alliance and,therefore, of the consolidation of the dictatorship of the pro-letariat.

2. This process brings us back to consideration of the pro-duction relations in the state sector and the class conse-quences of these relations. Here, we are at the heart of thecontradictions that developed during the years precedingthe procurement crisis and the complete abandonment of theNEP. The importance of these contradictions (which con-cerned mainly the industrial sector) and their fundamentalcharacter require that they be subjected to specific analysis.This analysis cannot confine itself to an examination of formsof ownership, but must focus upon the structure of the im-mediate production process itself and the conditions for re-producing the factors in this process, and also upon the waysin which the production relations were perceived, and theireffects upon the class struggles.

Notes

1. See N. Valentinov’s article, “De la ‘NEP’ à la collectivisation,” inLe Contrat social. (March–April 1964), p. 79.

2. Ibid., p. 79.3. On the concept of “census industry,” see note 12, p. 196 above.4. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 950.5. A. Baykov, The Soviet Economic System, p. 124.


6.vol. I, pt. 2, pp. 947, 950.

7. Shapiro, “Kustarno-remeslennaya promyshlennost,” in Plano-voye Khozyaistvo, no. 6 (1927), p. 70 ff., quoted in Gross-kopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 334.

8. See above, p. 144.9. Lenin, CW, vol. 32, pp. 350, 352. In On Co-operation, Lenin

wrote that incorporation of the whole population in cooperatives,could be achieved, “at best, . . . in one or two decades” (ibid.,vol. 33, p. 470).

10. In the conclusion to the pamphlet quoted, Lenin returns to thistheme, calling for “the development of local initiative and inde-pendent action in encouraging exchange between agriculture

364).11. Ibid., p. 347.12. Baykov, The Soviet Economic System, p. 122.13. Izvestiya VTsIK, no. 103 (1927), quoted in Grosskopf, L’Alliance

ouvrière, pp. 366–367.14. After 1929 the policy of shutting down private production units

became quasiofficial, as a prolongation of the policy of “de-kulakisation” which prevailed at that time.

15. Kontrolnye tsifry 1926–1927 gg., p. 484, quoted in Carr andDavies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 961.

16. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 962.17. Ibid.18. Voprosy Torgovli, no. 4 (January 1929), pp. 64–65.19. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 1, pp. 840 ff.20. Meaning the areas where private trade had been eliminated

without being replaced by state and cooperative trade.21. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 224 ff.22. Ibid., pp. 351 ff.23. Thus, in his speech to the CC on July 9, 1928, Stalin declared:

“We often say that we are promoting socialist forms of economyin the sphere of trade. But what does that imply? It implies thatwe are squeezing out of trade thousands upon thousands of smalland medium traders” (Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p. 178 .

24. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 938.25. See Lenin, CW, vol. 32, pp. 372–374: “To Comrade

Kryzhizhanovsky, the Presidium of the State Planning Commis-sion” (1921).

and industry” to be “given the fullest scope at all costs” (ibid., p.

Calculated from ibid., p. 124, and Carr and Davies, Foundations,

209

3. The forms of ownership in the statesector and the structure of the immediate production process

Toward the end of the NEP, state-owned industry consistedmainly of established industrial enterprises which had beennationalized after the October Revolution, together with asmall number of new enterprises. It coincided largely withlarge-scale industry, and was, in the main, directly subject tothe central economic organs of the Soviet state—in practice,the VSNKh.1 Only a few state-owned industrial enterpriseswere in the hands of the republics or of regional or localorgans. Thus, in 1926–1927, industry directly planned by theVSNKh provided 77 percent of the value of all production bylarge-scale industry.2

Sale of the goods produced was largely in the hands of anetwork of state (and official cooperative) organs that wereindependent of the industrial enterprises. However, duringthe NEP period, state-owned industry also developed its ownorgans for wholesale trade, and sometimes even for retailtrade. These were usually organized at the level of the unionsof enterprises, the Soviet trusts, or at the level of the organsformed by agreements between trusts, unions, andenterprises—organs known as “sales syndicates.”3

Toward the end of the NEP period, industry’s sales organswere gradually detached from the industrial enterprises them-selves and integrated, in the form of a special administration,in the People’s Commissariats to which the enterprises be-longed. In particular, the sale of industrial products to theultimate consumers was to an increasing extent entrusted tostate trading bodies separate from industry and operating onthe levels of wholesale, semiwholesale, and retail trade. Thisseparation made possible, in principle, better supervision of


commercial operations by the central state organs. The mostimportant trading bodies came under the People’s Commis-sariat of Trade (Narkomtorg), while others came under therepublics of the regions.4 The fact that these different organsexisted, and the conditions under which products circulatedamong them, reveal the commodity character of productionand circulation.

As Lenin had often emphasized, especially in his discussionof state capitalism, 5 state ownership is not equivalent tosocialist ownership. Under conditions of the dictatorship ofthe proletariat, statization makes possible a struggle forsocialization of production, for real socialist transformation ofthe production relations. Under the dictatorship of the pro-letariat, state ownership may be a socialist form of ownership,but it cannot remain so except in so far as (given the concreteconditions of class relations) a struggle is waged for thesocialist transformation of production relations. So long as thistransformation has not been completed, state ownership pos-sesses a twofold nature: it is both a socialist form of owner-ship, because of the class nature of the state, and a state-capitalist form, because of the partly capitalist nature of theexisting production relations, the limited extent of transforma-tion undergone by the processes of production and reproduc-tion. If this is lost sight of, the concept of ownership is reducedto its juridical aspect and the actual social significance of thejuridical form of ownership, which can be grasped only byanalyzing the production relations, is overlooked.6

The starting point for this analysis has to be clarification ofthe structure of the immediate production process, which canbe perceived at the levels of forms of management, discipline,cooperation, and organization of labor.

I. The forms of management in thestate-owned factories

As regards the forms of management in the state enterprises, we need to recall that at the end of the NEP the measures


adopted in the spring of 1918 were still in force. We have seenthat these measures introduced a system of one-person man-agement of each enterprise, with the manager appointed bythe central organs and not subject to workers’ control.7 Thesemeasures had been adopted provisionally, in order to combatwhat Lenin called “the practice of a lily-livered proletariangovernment.” 8

In 1926 the difficulties initially encountered in the man-agement of enterprises had been overcome, but the forms ofmanagement adopted because of these earlier difficulties re-mained in force. These forms were not socialist forms: theyimplied the existence of elements of capitalist relations at thelevel of the immediate production process itself. Lenin hadnot hesitated, in 1918, to acknowledge this reality quiteplainly. He had defined the adoption of the principle of payinghigh salaries to managers as “a step backward,” leading to astrengthening of capital, since, as he put it, “capital is not asum of money but a definite social relation.” This “step back-ward” reinforced the “state-capitalist” character of the pro-duction relations. Speaking of the establishment of “indi-vidual dictatorial powers” (which were to take the form ofone-person management), he referred to their importance“from the point of view of the specific tasks of the presentmoment.” He stressed the need for discipline and coercion,mentioning that “the form of coercion is determined by thedegree of development of the given revolutionary class.”9 Thelower the level of development of this class, the more the formassumed by factory discipline tends to resemble capitalistdiscipline.

We must ask ourselves why the Bolshevik Party maintainedhigh salaries for managers and the form of one-person man-agement adopted a few months after the October Revolution,when the conditions which had originally caused these prac-tices to be adopted had passed away.

The maintenance of this system was clearly connected withthe class struggle, with the struggle waged by the heads ofenterprises to retain and even strengthen their power andtheir privileges. However, the way in which this struggledeveloped, and its outcome, cannot be separated from certain


features of the Bolshevik ideological formation and thechanges which it underwent. These changes led, especially, todecisive importance being accorded to forms of organizationand ownership and to less and less attention being given to thedevelopment of a real dialectical analysis that could bring outthe contradictory nature of reality.

The Outline of Political Economy by Lapidus and Os-trovityanov gives especially systematic expression to the non-dialectical perception of social relations which was character-istic of the Soviet formation at the end of the 1920s. We shallhave to come back to a number of aspects of this way ofperceiving the economic and social reality of the USSR; forthe moment, let us confine ourselves to the following formula-tion: “We were guided mainly by the fact that the relationsin the two main branches of Soviet economics, the socialiststate relations on the one hand, and the simple commodity re-lations in agriculture, on the other, are fundamentally not cap-italist. . . .”10

The writers do not deny that there were at that time (1928)“state capitalist and private capitalist elements in the Sovietsystem,”11 but they recognize their presence only in the pri-vate capitalist enterprises. They thus renounce attempting anyanalysis of the internal contradictions of the state sector. Sucha simplified conception of the production relations preventedcorrect treatment of the contradictions and socialist transfor-mation of the production relations in the state enterprises. Itwas all the more considerable an obstacle in that, toward theend of the NEP period, this simplified conception was gener-ally accepted in the Bolshevik Party. After 1926 the state-owned enterprises, instead of being seen (as had been thecase previously) as belonging to a “state sector” whose con-tradictory nature called for analysis, were all described asforming part of a “socialist sector” in which the productionrelations were not contradictory.

Here we see one aspect of the changes in the Bolshevikideological formation. These changes were connected withthe struggle of the managers of state enterprises to strengthentheir authority and increase their political and social role.


They cannot be separated from the fact that the increasingextent to which the heads of enterprises were of proletarianorigin tended to be identified with progress in the leading roleplayed by the proletariat as a class; whereas this class origin ofthe managers offered no guarantee of their class position andcould, of course, in no way alter the class character of theexisting social production relations.

The nature of the social relations reproduced at the level ofthe immediate labor process was manifested not only in thetype of management exercized in relation to the workers, butalso in the way that work norms were fixed, in factory disci-pline, and in the contradictions that developed in these con-nections.

II. The fixing of work norms from above

Where work norms are concerned, it is to be noted in thefirst place that their observance or nonobservance by theworkers was to an ever greater extent controlled by variationsin the wages paid to them, especially after the extension ofpiecework approved by a CC resolution of August 19, 1924.12

Large-scale application of this resolution began in 1926, inconnection with the demands of the industrial plan, and owingto the tendency for wages to increase faster than productivity.In August 1926 the question of revising the norms was broughtup by the heads of enterprises and by the VSNKh, who de-nounced the increasing spread of the “scissors” between pro-ductivity and wages, with the latter rising faster than theformer.13 In October 1926 the Fifteenth Party Conferenceaffirmed the need to revise production norms upward; it alsocalled for a strengthening of labor discipline, so as to deal withthe resistance that “certain groups of workers” were puttingup against increased norms, and to combat more effectivelyabsenteeism and negligent work.14

At the Seventh Congress of the Trade Unions, held in De-cember 1926, several delegates complained that managers


were using these resolutions as a pretext for intensifying workto an excessive degree. However, while denouncing abuseswhich led to “a worsening of the material situation of theworkers,”15 the leaders of the trade unions emphasized mainlythe need to raise productivity.

In 1927 the current in favor of increasing the work normsimposed from above became stronger. It was shown especiallyin the adoption by the CC, on March 24, 1927, of a resolutiondevoted to “rationalisation.” 16 This resolution was used by themanagers and by the economic organs in an effort to imposeever higher work norms, determined by research departmentsand services specializing in time-and-motion study.

This procedure tended to reduce the role of collective polit-ical work among the workers and to give greater and greaterascendancy to work norms decided upon by “technicians.”The resistance with which this tendency met explains why,during the summer of 1927, Kuibyshev, who then becamechairman of the VSNKh, called upon that organ to engagemore actively in the revision of norms, and not to hesitate indismissing “redundant” workers. 17

At the end of 1927 the revision of work norms was goingahead fast. At the beginning of 1928 the trade unions com-plained that “in the great majority of cases, the economicorgans are demanding complete revision of the norms in allenterprises, which is resulting in wage-cuts.” 18

Closely linked with the question of norms and the waythey were fixed was the question of labor discipline and the rela-tions between the workers and the management personnel inthe enterprises. From the beginning of the NEP period thisquestion had given rise to a struggle between two paths, astruggle that was especially confused because what was reallyat issue in it—namely, the nature of production relations in thestate enterprises—was not clearly perceived. This confusionexplains the contradictory nature of the political line followedin the matter by the Bolshevik Party.

When we analyze this line we observe a crisscrossing of two“paths”—one that could lead to a transformation of productionrelations through developing the initiative of the masses, and


another that tended to maintain and strengthen the hierarchi-cal forms of labor discipline in the name of the primacy ofproduction. From 1928 on, the second of these “paths” be-came stronger, and it triumphed decisively in April 1929, withthe adoption of the “maximal” variant of the First Five-YearPlan.

The crisscrossing of these two “paths” demands that, for thesake of greater clarity, we examine each of them separately.

III. The class struggle and the struggle totransform the production relations

At the level of the Party leadership, the first explicit man-ifestation of a line aimed concretely at modifying the relationsbetween the managements of enterprises and the mass of theworkers appeared in a resolution adopted by the ThirteenthParty Conference in January 1924. In order to understand thesignificance of this resolution, however, we need to go back alittle and see in what terms the problems dealt with by thisresolution had previously been discussed.

(a) Managements and trade unions

The problems explicitly presented were, in the first place,those of the respective roles to be played in the functioning ofenterprises, by the management and by the trade unions. Itwas in this form that the Eleventh Party Congress (1922) hadadopted certain positions, in particular by passing a resolutionwhich approved Lenin’s theses on “The Role and Functionsof the Trade Unions.” 19

This document dealt with the role to be played by the tradeunions in the running of enterprises and the economy as awhole. In the document we can distinguish between a princi-pal aspect, referring to the “present situation” in Soviet Rus-sia, and a secondary aspect (secondary in the sense that it wasnot urgent at that time), referring to the future.


As regards the “present,” the document stressed the need tocope as quickly as possible with the consequences of “post-war ruin, famine and dislocation.” It declared that “thespeediest and most enduring success in restoring large-scaleindustry is a condition without which no success can beachieved in the general cause of emancipating labour from theyoke of capital and securing the victory of socialism.” And itwent on: “To achieve this success in Russia, in her presentstate [my emphasis—C. B.], it is absolutely essential that allauthority in the factories should be concentrated in the handsof management.” 20 From this the conclusion was drawn that“Under these circumstances, all direct interference by thetrade unions in the management of factories must be regardedas positively harmful and impermissible.” 21

It is clear that Lenin’s theses are concerned with “the pres-ent state” of Russia, and that the very way in which he dealswith it implies that once the country has emerged from thissituation the principles set forth as relevant to it will cease toapply. The “present state” he was writing about was domi-nated by famine and poverty, from which the Party was tryingto rescue the country as soon as possible, leaving a certainnumber of capitalist relations untouched for the time being.

The resolution on the trade unions which was adopted bythe Eleventh Congress warned, however, against the notionthat, even in the immediate present, the trade unions were tobe pushed out of the sphere of management altogether. Whatit condemned was “direct interference,” and it made its posi-tion clear by saying that “it would be absolutely wrong, how-ever, to interpret this indisputable axiom to mean that thetrade unions must play no part in the socialist organization ofindustry and in the management of state industry.” 22

The resolution outlines the forms that this participation is totake: the trade unions are to participate in all the organs formanaging and administering the economy as a whole; there isto be training and advancement of administrators drawn fromthe working class and the working people generally; the tradeunions are to participate in all the state planning organs in thedrawing up of economic plans and programs; and so on.23


Here, too, the text states clearly that the forms of participa-tion listed are for “the immediate period,” 24 which impliesthat other forms may develop later on, so that it is one of theParty’s tasks “deliberately and resolutely to start perseveringpractical activities calculated to extend over a long period ofyears and designed to give the workers and all working peoplegenerally practical training in the art of managing theeconomy of the whole country.” 25

(b) The production conferences

The position adopted at the Eleventh Congress makes clearthe significance of the resolution passed in January 1924 bythe Thirteenth Party Conference. It was a first step takentoward according a bigger role to the workers in the stateenterprises in defining production tasks and the conditions fortheir fulfillment.

This resolution urged that regular “production conferences”be held, at which current problems concerning productionand the results obtained should be discussed and experienceexchanged. The resolution stated that the conferences shouldbe attended by “representatives of the economic organs and ofthe trade unions and also workers both Party and non-Party.” 26 This decision thus tended to subject the managerialactivity of the heads of enterprises to supervision no longerby the higher authorities only, but also by the trade unionsand the workers, whether Party members or not.

The Sixth Trades Union Congress (September 1924) and theFourteenth Party Conference (April 1925) confirmed this line.However, its implementation came up against strong resis-tance, mainly from the economic organs and the heads ofenterprises and trusts.

On May 15, 1925, a resolution adopted by the CC recog-nized that the production conferences had not developed in asatisfactory way, that they had not succeeded in bringing to-gether “really broad strata of the workers.” 27 The CC issuedinstructions which it was hoped would improve this state ofaffairs. Actually, 1925 was a year of economic tension during


which the power of the trade union organizations was in re-treat.

At the Fourteenth Party Congress (December 1925)Tomsky, the chairman of the Central Trades Union Council,described the difficulties encountered by the production con-ferences because of the hostility of the heads of enterprises.Molotov reported that fewer than 600 conferences had beenheld in Moscow and Leningrad, bringing together about70,000 workers. A resolution on trade union matters adoptedby the CC in October 1925 had taken an ambiguous line onthis problem, reflecting the strong pressure then being exer-cised by most of the heads of enterprises and those who sup-ported their views within the Party. While confirming theneed to develop “production meetings,” this resolutionwarned against a “management deviation,” in the sense ofinterfering “directly and without competence to do so in themanagement and administration of enterprises.” 28 This docu-ment refers several times to the resolution adopted by theEleventh Party Congress, which was then nearly four yearsold, and which, as we have seen, did not rule out directintervention by the trade unions and the workers in the man-agement of enterprises except in “the present state” of SovietRussia; whereas the situation at the end of 1925 was verydifferent from what it had been then.29

A resolution passed in December 1925 by the FourteenthParty Congress remained very cautious regarding productionmeetings, reminding all concerned that the ultimate aim ofsuch meetings was “to give practical instruction to the workersand all the working people in how to run the economy of thecountry as a whole.” 30

At the beginning of 1926 a fresh impulse was given to theline, aimed at giving the workers a bigger role in defining thetasks of production. In a report on April 13, (in which he dealtwith the work of the CC plenum held at the beginning of themonth) Stalin forcefully stressed the need to put a mass line intoeffect in order to solve the tasks of industrialization. The partof his report devoted to this problem emphasized the need toreduce unproductive expenditure to the minimum. It thus


went against the ideas of the heads of enterprises, who em-phasized above all intensification of labor, raising of norms,reduction of wages, and strengthening of labor discipline im-posed from above.

What Stalin said on this subject was organically linked withthe will to develop industry by means of its own resources,these being constituted first and foremost by the workersthemselves. In this connection certain passages in his report ofApril 13, 1926, were of great importance. Thus, after examin-ing some of the principal tasks to be accomplished in order toadvance industrialization, Stalin asked: “Can these tasks be-accomplished without the direct assistance and support of theworking class?” And he replied:

No, they cannot. Advancing our industry, raising its produc-tivity, creating new cadres of builders of industry, . . . establish-ing a regime of the strictest economy, tightening up the stateapparatus, making it operate cheaply and honestly, purging it ofthe dross and filth which have adhered to it during the period ofour work of construction, waging a systematic struggle againststealers and squanderers of state property—all these are taskswhich no party can cope with without the direct and systematicsupport of the vast masses of the working class. Hence the task isto draw the vast masses of non-Party workers into all our con-structive work. Every worker, every honest peasant must assistthe Party and the Government in putting into effect a regime ofeconomy, in combating the misappropriation and dissipation ofstate reserves, in getting rid of thieves and swindlers, no matterwhat disguise they assume, and in making our state apparatushealthier and cheaper. Inestimable service in this respect couldbe rendered by production conferences. . . . The productionconferences must be revived at all costs. . . . Their programmemust be made broader and more comprehensive. The principalquestions of the building of industry must be placed beforethem. Only in that way is it possible to raise the activity of thevast masses of the working class and to make them consciousparticipants in the building of industry.31

This speech of Stalin’s was followed by a reexamination ofthe problem of the production conferences by the CentralTrades Union Council and by the VSNKh (at that time still


headed by Dzerzhinsky). In a note which he signed on June22, 1926, only a few days before his death, Dzerzhinsky didnot shrink from declaring that the lack of success of the pro-duction conferences was due to “our managers who have nothitherto shown active goodwill in this matter.” 32 As a result ofthis note, a joint resolution was adopted by the Central TradesUnion Council and the VSNKh, calling for the establishmentof production commissions in all the factories, with the task ofpreparing proposals and agenda for the production confer-ences.33

In the second half of 1926 and at the beginning of 1927 thestruggle between a line directed toward mass participation inmanagement and a line tending to consolidate the dominantposition of the heads of enterprises in matters of management,economy, labor discipline, and so on, seems to have becomemore intense. Nevertheless, neither of these two lines wasever openly counterposed to the other: the conflict proceededin terms of shifts of emphasis, with the substitution of oneword for another having real political significance. Thus, theFifteenth Party Conference (October 1926) passed two reso-lutions which again underlined the importance of the produc-tion conferences.34 These documents looked forward to in-creased activity by production meetings, with extension oftheir field of competence alike in general questions and ques-tions of detail, so as to achieve a “form of direct participationby the workers in the organisation of production.” 35 For thispurpose it was provided that “temporary commissions forworkers’ control in a given enterprise” could be set up, andthat their functions be defined by the Central Trades UnionCouncil and the VSNKh.36

The resolution on the country’s economic situation con-demned the line that had been followed by the economicorgans. They were accused of having “distorted the Party’sdirectives,” with the result that attempts had been made “toeffect economies at the expense of the essential interests ofthe working class.” 37 The resolution demanded that the per-sonnel of the economic organs be decisively reduced in num-bers, together with administrative costs, that systems of man-


agement and decision-making be rationalized, and that astruggle against bureaucracy be launched.

The Fifteenth Conference dealt with the problem of in-creasing the productivity of labor by stressing “the immensesignificance of the production-meetings.” The resolutionadopted said that “without active participation by the workermasses the fight to strengthen labour discipline cannot fullysucceed, just as without broad participation by the workermasses it is not possible to solve successfully any of the tasksor to overcome any of the difficulties that arise on the road ofsocialist construction.” 38

The adoption of these resolutions was strongly resisted.Some managers feared a reappearance of “workers’ control” inthe form it had taken in October 1917, while others com-plained that the controls they already had to put up withconstituted an excessive burden.39

In the two months following the Fifteenth Conference theheads of enterprises and the VSNKh seem to havestrengthened their positions. The Seventh Congress of TradeUnions, held in December, dealt only cautiously with thequestion of production conferences and control commissions.The principal resolution voted by this Congress even stressedthat the organizing of commissions “must in no case be inter-preted as a direct interference in the functions of administra-tive or economic management of the enterprise concerned.”40

In practice, the temporary control commissions elected by theproduction conferences usually consisted of five or sevenskilled workers, who dealt with relatively limited questions:analysis of the reasons for a high cost of production, shortcom-ings in the utilization of labor power, fight against waste.41

Applying the resolutions of the Fifteenth Party Conference,the VSNKh and the Central Trades Union Council jointlydecided, on February 2, 1927, to set up temporary controlcommissions, but subsequent events showed that the commis-sions thus created did not do very much during 1927. At theFifteenth Party Congress (December 1927) the negative at-titude of the economic leaders and heads of enterprises wasmentioned as the reason for this. The plenum of April 1928


also blamed the trade-union cadres for the poor organization ofthe production conferences, the infrequency of their meet-ings, and the lack of interest in them shown by many work-ers.42

For whatever reason, in April 1928 the production confer-ences were still not playing the role that the resolutionsadopted up to that time had assigned to them.

(c) The “criticism” movement of 1928

The April 1928 session of the CC returned to these sameproblems. In his report of the session, given on April 13,43

Stalin dwelt upon the need to develop criticism and self-criticism of a really mass character.44 What he said in thisconnection concerned especially the heads of enterprises, en-gineers, and technicians:

we must see to it that the vigilance of the working class is notdamped down, but stimulated, that hundreds of thousands andmillions of workers are drawn into the general work of socialistconstruction, that hundreds of thousands and millions of workersand peasants, and not merely a dozen leaders, keep watch overthe progress of our construction work, notice our errors and bringthem into the light of day. . . . But to bring this about, we mustdevelop criticism of our shortcomings from below, we must makecriticism the affair of the masses. . . . If the workers take advan-tage of the opportunity to criticise shortcomings in our workfrankly and bluntly, to improve and advance our work, what doesthat mean? It means that the workers are becoming active partic-ipants in the work of directing the country, economy, industry.And this cannot but enhance in the workers the feeling that they are the masters of the country, cannot but enhance their activity,their vigilance, their culture. . . . That, incidentally, is the rea-son why the question of a cultural revolution is so acute withus.45

This passage thus linked together the theme of the need forclass criticism coming from the rank and file with the theme ofa cultural revolution and active participation by the workingpeople in the work of running the economy and the country.


The way in which these themes were expounded by Stalinshows that at the beginning of 1928 the contradiction betweenthe demands of the preceding stage of the NEP (the stage ofrestoring the economy and of the first steps taken along thepath of industrial development) and the demands of the newstage (the stage of accelerated industrialization) had reachedobjectively a high degree of acuteness. Industry could nolonger advance “by its own resources” unless the workersattacked the practices and social relations characteristic of theprevious phase. If this attack did not take place, if the workersdid not revolt against the existing practices and social rela-tions, and if this revolt was not correctly guided, but disperseditself over secondary “targets,” then the growth in the con-tradictions that resulted must inevitably obstruct the de-velopment of industry by means of its own resources, leadingeither to a crisis of industrialization or to a type of industrialdevelopment very different from that which the BolshevikParty wished to promote on the morrow of its Fifteenth Con-gress.

The year was marked by a serious development of the work-ers’ struggle, but also by the dispersal of this struggle over avariety of targets—owing to the Bolshevik Party’s inability toconcentrate it on the main thing, namely, transformation ofproduction relations. What happened in the spring of that yearwas particularly significant in this connection.

The beginning of 1928 saw several “affairs” coming to ahead, affairs which gravely undermined the authority of theheads of enterprises, engineers, and specialists, and also somelocal and regional Party cadres. Two of these “affairs” wereespecially important: those of Shakhty and Smolensk. Stalinalluded to them explicitly in his report of April 13, 1928,mentioned above,46 and in his speech to the Eighth KomsomolCongress on May 16.47

The first of these affairs gave rise to a trial which was heldbetween the beginning of May and the beginning of July1928.48 The accused in this trial were a number of specialistsof bourgeois origin who held managerial posts in the coal-mines of the Ukraine. They were charged with sabotage and


counter-revolutionary activity in conspiracy with foreignpowers, and were sentenced to severe penalties.

The second affair was more important politically, for it wasprovincial Party cadres who were gravely implicated in it.Occurring also at the beginning of 1928, it gave rise to aninquiry by the Party’s Central Control Commission, and theconclusions were published in Pravda on 18 May 1928. Ac-cording to these conclusions, a number of Party officials inSmolensk Region had become sunk in corruption and deprav-ity. The results of the investigation were put before a gather-ing of 1,100 Party members, 40 percent of whom were produc-tion workers. The report of the inquiry and the discussion atthis meeting show that, at the request of political leaders inthe region, 60 persons had been arrested—although therewere no criminal charges to be brought against them, andthere had been cases of suicide on the part of workers whoseurgent applications had been met with indifference by theleadership, and so on. As a result of these revelations, about 60percent of the cadres (at every level) in the Smolensk Regionwere relieved of their posts, and were replaced mainly byworker militants. However, the punishment meted out to theformer cadres was not very severe, and the rank-and-fileworkers were unhappy about this.49

The Smolensk affair was not the only one involving cadresat a regional level and which presented similar features, but itwas mainly in connection with this affair that Stalin ex-pounded important themes which found a wide echo in theworking class.

These themes were set forth principally in the speech to theEighth Komsomol Congress. In this speech Stalin stressedthat the class struggle was still going on, and that, in relation toits class enemies, the working class must develop “its vigi-lance, its revolutionary spirit, its readiness for action.”50 Hereturned to the need for “organising mass control from be-low.”51 What was particularly significant in this speech wasthat he called for control from below to be developed inrelation not only to specialists and engineers of bourgeoisorigin but also to the Party cadres themselves and the en-gineers of working-class origin. He denounced the idea that


only the old bureaucracy constituted a danger. If that were so,he said, everything would be easy. He emphasized that “it is amatter of the new bureaucrats, bureaucrats who sympathisewith the Soviet Government, and, finally, Communistbureaucrats.” 52

Stalin then referred to the Smolensk “affair” and someothers, asking how it was that such shameful cases of corrup-tion and moral degradation could have occurred in certainParty organizations. This was the explanation he gave: “Thefact that Party monopoly was carried to absurd lengths, thatthe voice of the rank-and-file was stifled, that inner-Party de-mocracy was abolished and bureaucracy became rife. . . .”And he added: “I think that there is not and cannot be anyother way of combating this evil than by organising controlfrom below by the Party masses, by implanting inner-Partydemocracy.” 53

Later, Stalin explained that this control must be exercisednot only by the masses who had joined the Party but by theworking masses as a whole, and by the working class first andforemost:

We have production conferences in the factories. We have tem-porary control commissions in the trade unions. It is the task ofthese organisations to rouse the masses, to bring our shortcom-ings to light and to indicate ways and means of improving ourconstructive work. . . . Is it not obvious that it is bureaucracy inthe trade unions, coupled with bureaucracy in the Party organisa-tions, that is preventing these highly important organisations ofthe working class from developing?

Lastly, our economic organisations. Who will deny that oureconomic bodies suffer from bureaucracy? . . .

There is only one sole way [of putting an end to bureaucracy inall these organisations] and that is to organise control from be-low, to organise criticism of the bureaucracy in our institutions,of their shortcomings and their mistakes, by the vast masses ofthe working class. . . .

Only by organising twofold pressure—from above and frombelow—and only by shifting the principal stress to criticism frombelow, can we count on waging a successful struggle againstbureaucracy and on rooting it out. . . .

The vast masses of the workers who are engaged in building


our industry are day by day accumulating vast experience inconstruction. . . . Mass criticism from below, control from be-low, is needed by us in order that . . . this experience of the vastmasses should not be wasted, but be reckoned with and trans-lated into practice.

From this follows the immediate task of the Party: to wage aruthless struggle against bureaucracy, to organise mass criti-cism from below, and to take this criticism into account whenadopting practical decisions for eliminating our shortcomings.54

While continuing appeals that had been issued earlier,these declarations in the spring of 1928 signified an importantstep forward as compared with what had been said previously(in particular at the Fifteenth Party Congress). They revealeda shift of emphasis 55 which was of considerable significance,indicating a new stage in the class struggle and in its effects onthe Party line.

(d) The struggle of the poor and middlemanagement and way of trainingengineers and technicians

Comparison of these declarations with some others showsthat new conclusions were then in process of emerging withregard to the existing social relations, their nature, and theforms of struggle needed in order to transform them—althoughthe question of transforming social relations was not posedexplicitly.

In his report of April 13, 1928, Stalin questioned the existingregulations concerning managerial functions, in particular Cir-cular No. 33 dated March 29, 1926, on “The Organisation of theManagement of Industrial Establishments.” 56 He said of thiscircular that “these model regulations. . . . confer practicallyall the rights on the technical director,” and that it had becomean obstacle to the management of enterprises by Communistleaders risen from the working class.57

In the same report, Stalin also raised the question of eco-nomic leaders who were Party members of working-class ori-gin but who had begun, he said, “to deteriorate and degener-


ate and come to identify themselves in their way of living withthe bourgeois experts,” to whom they were becoming mere“appendages.”58

Here we see formulations appearing which suggest thatwithin the Party itself there might emerge a new bourgeoisie,taking over from the old one and forming a “Communistbureaucracy.” However, these formulations were not de-veloped, and even those quoted were not to be subsequentlyrepeated with the same sharpness. It is clear, nevertheless,that the expressions used reflected the development of acutecontradictions in the economic apparatuses and also in thoseof the Party and the State.

It will also be noted that in this same report of April 13Stalin raised the question of the training of “Red experts.” Heobserved that this training was bad, poorly adapted to indus-try’s needs, bookish, divorced from production and practicalexperience. He said that an expert trained in this way “doesnot want to soil his hands in a factory.” According to him, suchexperts were often badly received by the workers and wereunable to get the upper hand over the bourgeois experts. Inorder to change this situation, Stalin advocated that the train-ing of young experts be carried out differently, that it involve“continuous contact with production, with factory, mine andso forth.” 59

Here, too, a step forward was being made, as compared withthe way with which these same problems had been dealt up tothat time: we see taking shape a critique of the bourgeois wayof training technicians and engineers and a search for some-thing different.

When we analyze this passage, and some others, we candeduce that in the spring of 1928 some new and importantformulations were emerging. Today, in the light of the experi-ence of China, and, especially of the proletarian cultural revo-lution, we find ourselves thinking that if these reflections hadbeen deepened and systematized, they might have led to amore profound challenge to the existing organization of indus-try; to the relations between the heads of enterprises, en-gineers, and cadres, on the one hand, and the mass of the


workers, on the other; to the relation between education andproduction practice; and, finally, to the practice of the classstruggle. Actually, this deepening and systematization did nottake place in the Soviet Union, owing to the turn taken by theclass struggle in the second half of 1928.

During that year there was a turn in the conditions of theclass struggle. The first half of the year saw a rising tide ofinitiatives and criticisms coming from below and denouncingthe authoritarian way in which many persons in leading posi-tions were performing their tasks. Toward the end of 1928, onthe contrary, these initiatives ebbed away. Let us look moreclosely at what happened.

(e) The rise of the mass movement

In the first months of 1928 a growing number of workersbegan to criticize managers and engineers, blaming them fortheir attitude, their decisions, and the way they tried to speedup production even going so far as to violate the labor lawsand safety regulations.60 Before 1928 such criticism had notbeen made openly, for fear of punishment. The call for masscriticism helped to alter this situation.

Here something needs to be said about the reasons forincreased discontent in the working class at the beginning of1928. To be specially noted are the continued pressurebrought to bear to impose higher work norms from above, theserious difficulties affecting the supply of food, and the way inwhich the managements carried out the transition to three-shift working. This last point calls for some remarks.

It should be recalled that on October 16, 1927, a Partymanifesto was published 61 which provided for a gradualchange over from the eight-hour day to the seven-hour day,without any reduction in wages, on condition that productivityper workday was maintained or increased. This decision pre-pared the way for the change to three-shift working, a measurewhich the VSNKh had been advocating for some time on thegrounds that it would make possible more intensive use ofplant, and consequently, more employment.


The practical implementation of this measure was to becarried out on the basis of agreements made between the tradeunions and the economic organizations. Actually, the heads ofenterprises had taken steps already in order to arrange mattersin the way that suited them. Thus, despite protests from thetrade unions, in most textile mills the workers had been ob-liged to work two half-shifts a day, each of three and a halfhours, which disrupted their lives. We find in the press of thetime many protests against the way that shiftwork was beingintroduced,62 and against the consequences of nightwork foryoung persons and pregnant women.63

A new source of discontent among the workers was thuscreated which made them readier even than before to chal-lenge some of the decisions taken by the heads of enterprises.Faced with this questioning of their authority, many of thelatter, and many engineers, refused to accept that the workersover whom they had hitherto exercised power should dare tocriticize their decisions and their behavior. They tried to takereprisals, individual or collective, which only aggravated thetension.

From May 1928 on the heads of enterprises complainedincreasingly of a “slackening of labour discipline.” Thesecomplaints arose mainly in heavy industry and the coal mines.The points most often mentioned were: lower productivityand production, increased costs, poor maintenance of equip-ment, excessive absenteeism.64

Between April and June the number of stoppages (some ofwhich might, of course, have been due to technical causes)was greater than during the corresponding period of the pre-vious year, but it is hard to say what the real reasons were forthis phenomenon. The managers and engineers may havebeen responsible, either because they failed to organize thesupply of raw materials to the factories, or because they weretrying to “prove” that anything that threatened their authoritywas also a threat to production. Stoppages brought about inthat way may have been comparatively numerous. The mana-gers’ reports certainly exaggerated the effects upon productionof the tension that was developing. Production was still rising


rapidly, all the same.65 Moreover, this period saw the advanceof a movement of socialist emulation, which was most proba-bly stimulated by the development of mass initiative whichaccompanied the multiplication of production conferencesand the open voicing of grievances and criticism.

However that may have been, the heads of the economicorgans reacted aggressively to the development of the massmovement which called their “authority” in question. Thosejournals which expressed the views of the managers and theeconomic organizations developed a veritable antiworkercampaign, writing of the “cultural and technical backward-ness” of the workers in general and of the “low cultural level”of the workers of peasant origin in particular—which signifiedthat criticisms or proposals coming from the workers were notworth considering.

The managers’ journal invoked the principle of one-personmanagement, as if this were a principle not to be touched,instead of a measure adopted at a particular moment in orderto deal with conditions specific to that moment. It wrote:“Soviet principles of management of enterprises and produc-tion are being replaced by the principle of election, and, inpractice, by the responsibility of those who elect.”66

In the press of the VSNKh and the economic organs manyarticles appeared accusing the workers not only of indisciplineand absenteeism but also of plundering, larceny, drunken-ness at work, and insulting or assaulting the specialists andadministrators. Such things certainly did happen. They ex-pressed the exasperation of part of the working class againstthe resistance offered by the managers to changes in the or-ganization of production proposed by the workers, and alsothe workers’ resentment of increased work norms imposedfrom above.

In face of the rising tide of criticism by the working classand the reactions thereto of the managers and the middlecadres of the Party, more and more hesitation was shown as tothe line to be followed. Stalin’s article “Against Vulgarisingthe Slogan of Self-Criticism”67 gives clear expression to thishesitation.


The principal aspect of this article was an appeal for masscriticism to continue. Several passages say this, for instance:“With all the more persistence must we rouse the vast massesof the workers and peasants to the task of criticism from below,of control from below, as the principal antidote to bureauc-racy.” 68

Or, again:

Nor can it be denied that, as a result of self-criticism, our busi-ness executives are beginning to smarten up, to become morevigilant, to approach questions of economic leadership moreseriously, while our Party, Soviet, trade-union and all other per-sonnel are becoming more sensitive and responsive to the re-quirements of the masses.

True, it cannot be said that inner-Party democracy andworking-class democracy generally are already fully establishedin the mass organisations of the working class. But there is noreason to doubt that further advances will be made in this field asthe campaign unfolds.69

This formulation thus called for criticism from below tocontinue. Yet the aims of the movement remained ambiguous.On the problems of discipline Stalin had this to say: “Self-criticism is needed not in order to shatter labour discipline butto stregthen it, in order that labour discipline may becomeconscious discipline, capable of withstanding petty-bourgeoisslackness.” 70

In a way, this formulation replied to the complaints of themanagers about “slackening of discipline,” but it did not replycompletely, for it did not say in so many words that the con-scious discipline mentioned implied, above all, new forms ofdiscipline. This lack of precision left a gap affecting the orien-tation of the mass movement.

Similarly, where problems of management were concerned,the formulations remained ambiguous, as here: “Self-criticismis needed not in order to relax leadership, but to strengthen it,in order to convert it from leadership on paper and of littleauthority into vigorous and really authoritative leadership.” 71

This formulation does not say whether the forms of leadershiphad to be changed or not, nor does it say who is to lead, or the


basis on which the authority of the leadership is to befounded.

As well as these ambiguities, this document of June 1928contained a certain number of remarks which were to beseized on by the opponents of the mass movement, remarkswhich reflect hesitation and fear inspired by the scope that themovement was attaining. One of these remarks warned againstcertain “destructive” criticisms the aim of which was not toimprove the work of construction.72 The local cadres and man-agers were not slow to make use of such a remark to condemnas “destructive” any criticism or proposal that they wished tobrush aside.

Another remark entailed more immediate consequences forthe future development of the movement, namely:

It must be observed . . . that there is a definite tendency on thepart of a number of our organisations to turn self-criticism into awitch-hunt against our business executives. . . . It is a fact thatcertain local organisations in the Ukraine and Central Russiahave started a regular witch-hunt against some of our best busi-ness executives. . . . How else are we to understand the deci-sions of the local organisations to remove these executives fromtheir posts, decisions which have no binding force whatever andwhich are obviously designed to discredit them? 73

This remark shows the wide scope the movement had at-tained, and also the limits within which it was considered tobe acceptable. Since these limits were being transcended,what was ultimately at issue was whether support would con-tinue to be given to it, or whether brakes were to be applied toits development.

Actually, during part of the second half of 1928 the move-ment still went forward, and even assumed dimensions thatworried the Party leadership more and more. Thus, inNovember 1928, Kuibyshev, addressing the plenum of theVSNKh, denounced the situation which had been created bysaying: “The formula: ‘public opinion is against him’ has al-ready become typical.” He went on to explain that when thehead of an enterprise or a trust found himself in this position,“he has no alternative but to depart, to abandon his post.” 74


This statement constituted a warning against the con-tinuance of a movement which, while becoming widespread,nevertheless threw up no new forms of organization, disci-pline, and leadership. For lack of proper guidance, the move-ment of criticism from below failed to organize itself or tobring about a real transformation of social practices and rela-tions.

(f) The ebbing of the mass movement

Under these conditions, the mass movement began toweaken toward the end of 1928. The accounts we have of it(mostly unfavorable to real change) give the impression thatthe workers’ discontent found dispersed expression in indi-vidual acts: attacks by a few workers (usually youngsters, andsometimes Komsomols) on particular engineers, technicians,managers, etc. The situation was, however, one in which thesemore or less isolated acts were not looked on with disapprovalby those workers who knew about them, including some Partymembers.

Through failing to rise to a new stage and through ceasing tobe supported, the movement ran out of steam. True, at the endof 1928 the Eighth Congress of the Trade Unions voted aresolution providing for extension of the production confer-ences and temporary control commissions.75 But these com-missions played no great role, and even tended to disappear in1929. As for the production conferences, while they were heldmore or less regularly, they performed only routine tasks.

In 1929, then, it was the struggle to consolidate existingrelations that triumphed.

The speed with which the movement of criticism frombelow began to ebb may seem surprising. It is perhaps to beexplained by the conjunction of a number of factors. First, themovement ceased to be supported by the Party’s basic organi-zations, since emphasis had been laid once more upon theimportance of factory discipline, and the basic trade-unionorganizations hesitated more and more to give their backing toinitiatives which no longer enjoyed the Party’s approval. Sec-


ondly, as we shall see, fresh powers were granted to the headsof enterprises, so that they now possessed more effectivemeans to “restore discipline,” and were encouraged to makeuse of them. Finally, the movement, which developed veryunevenly, became divided and weakened when it no longerhad support from the Bolshevik Party.

IV. The struggle to consolidate existingrelations and for a labor disciplineimposed from above

What has been said already about the way with which theproblem of fixing work norms was dealt has shown that, alongwith the struggle to transform existing relations, a struggle wasalso being waged for the maintenance and consolidation ofthese relations. From February 1929 on it was this strugglethat played the principal role.

On February 21, 1929, the CC issued an appeal to all Partyorganizations to concentrate all their efforts on strengtheninglabor discipline.76 On March 6, 1929, the Council of People’sCommissars increased the disciplinary powers of managers.77

They were called upon to penalize more strictly all breachesof regulations, and to inflict severe punishment on workerswho did not conform to the orders of the management. Respectfor factory discipline became for the workers a conditionnecessary if they were to obtain any social advantages—whichincluded securing or retaining a place to live. The authority ofthe managements was further increased by a ban placed oninterference by Party or trade-union organizations in mattersconnected with the management of enterprises.

The development of the struggle for discipline imposedfrom above and against any “interference” in the activity ofmanagement was closely bound up with the decision to goover to the realization of an accelerated industrialization plan,which was seen as the only answer to the agricultural difficul-ties which, from then on, the Party sought increasingly to


solve through mechanization and collectivization. It was alsobound up with the circumstance that this industrializationdrive implied entry into the ranks of the working class ofworkers of peasant origin, toward whom the Bolshevik Partyfelt the same mistrust as toward the peasants in general.

The terms of the circular of February 21 were very explicit.It said that labor discipline was deteriorating as a result of “theattraction into production of new strata of workers, most ofwhom have ties with the country. Because of this, in mostcases rural attitudes and private economic interests dominatethese strata of workers. . . .” 78

The Sixteenth Party Conference opened on April 26. One ofthe principal items on the agenda was adoption of the FirstFive-Year Plan (which the conference did indeed adopt) in its“optimal”—actually, maximal—version. Kuibyshev, one of thethree rapporteurs on this item of the agenda, was the spokes-man for the Party line. One highly important aspect of hisreport consisted of very firm declarations regarding rein-forcement of labor discipline,79 about which he repeatedstatements made by Lenin in 1918 in utterly different circum-stances.

The toughening of labor discipline required far-reachingchanges among the trade-union cadres, who, in 1928, hadoften associated themselves with struggles against the om-nipotence of management. Such changes were all the morenecessary because a number of these trade-union cadres (start-ing with Tomsky, the chairman of the Central Trades UnionCouncil) had reserves about the targets of the industrializationplan, which, as they saw it, could only be carried through if anunacceptable intensification of labor and a lowering of realwages were imposed on the working class.

During the last months of 1928 the Party leadership attackedthe positions of those who opposed increases in output normsimposed from above. In December 1928, at the Eighth Con-gress of the Trade Unions, these opponents, includingTomsky, found themselves in a minority. Kaganovich, a sup-porter of the tightening-up of labor discipline, entered theTrades Union Council to represent the Party Secretariat.


Tomsky wanted to resign from the CC at this moment, but hisresignation was rejected.80

Between January and May 1929 the trades councils of theprincipal towns were reorganized. In May 1929 Tomsky wasremoved from the Central Trades Union Council, along withhis closest supporters, which meant almost the entire centralleadership of the trade unions. In the month that followed thechanges of personnel spread to the chief trade-union federa-tions, and then to the basic organizations of the unions.81

During 1929 the Party’s activity in the sphere of industrywas aimed mainly at strengthening labor discipline and restor-ing the authority of management.

The slogan of self-criticism did not disappear, of course, buthereafter it was linked closely with the slogan of emulation,and acquired an essentially “productionist” significance—apoint to which I shall return.

At the beginning of September the CC took a decisionaimed at ensuring strict application of the principle of one-person management, condemning tendencies on the part ofParty and trade-union organizations to interfere in manage-ment matters. The manager and the administration were to beregarded as solely responsible for realizing the industrial andfinancial plan and fulfilling production tasks, and for this pur-pose full power was concentrated in their hands. The Partyand trade-union organizations were called upon to strengthenthe authority of managements. Political discussion duringworking hours was forbidden: enterprises must not be trans-formed into “parliaments.” 82

At the beginning of December 1929 changes were intro-duced into the organization of industry: all commercial andadministrative functions were concentrated in large “Indus-trial Unions,” so as to strengthen the system of one-personmanagement at the level of the factories and workshops.83

Thus, the circle was closed. An end had been put to theunsettling of the system of one-person management which hadaccompanied the rise of the movement of criticism and self-criticism in the year 1928. The exigencies of the industrializa-


tion plan took precedence over the changing of productionrelations.

V. Taylorism and socialist emulation

During the NEP period the major aspect of the struggleagainst the reproduction of elements of capitalist productionrelations at the level of the immediate production process wasconstituted by the rise of the movement of criticism and self-criticism which developed in 1928 within the framework ofthe production conferences. As we have seen, however, thismovement proved incapable of progressing beyond relativelynarrow limits. Similar observations can be made regarding themovement aimed at developing a sort of “Soviet Taylorism.”

(a) The attempt to develop “SovietTaylorism”

At the heart of the immediate production process is thecarrying out, by each worker who belongs to a production unit,of precise tasks which are linked with the tasks carried out bythe other workers. The regular functioning of the productionunit depends on the regularity of everyone’s work.

With the development of capitalism, various procedureshave been perfected by capital in order to subject each workerto a particular task and ensure that he carries out this task inthe shortest possible time—procedures which tend increas-ingly to deprive the workers of all initiative and reduce themto mere cogs in a mechanism dominated by capital.

Marx revealed this inherent tendency in capital to try andsubordinate the wage worker completely, intensifying its ex-ploitation of labor power.

In Capital he notes:Not only is the specialised work distributed among the differentindividuals, but the individual himself is divided up, and trans-


formed into the automatic motor of a detail operation. . . . Theknowledge, judgment and will which even though to a smallextent, are exercised by the independent peasant or handi-craftsman . . . are faculties now required only for the workshopas a whole. The possibility of intelligent direction of productionexpands in one direction, because it vanishes in many others.What is lost by the specialised workers is concentrated in thecapital which confronts them.84

The “scientific organization of work” conceived by the Ameri-can engineer Taylor, and named “Taylorism” after him, wasthe most highly developed form of the capitalist labor processat the beginning of the twentieth century.85 The Soviet gov-ernment was confronted from the outset—and more so thanever during the NEP period—with the problem of forms oforganizing work, and of the place that might be given to atransformed “Taylorism,” which would acquire a new sig-nificance and become “Soviet Taylorism.” 86

Well before the October Revolution Lenin produced thenotion of a sort of “socialist Taylorism.” He wrote (in March1924 [1914—m2m]):

The Taylor system—without its initiators knowing or wishingit—is preparing the time when the proletariat will take over allsocial production and appoint its own workers’ committees forthe purpose of properly distributing and rationalising all sociallabour. Large-scale production, machinery, railways, thetelephone—all provide thousands of opportunities to cut bythree-fourths the working time of the organised workers, andmake them four times better off than they are today.87

Here we see appearing the conception of a reversal of theclass effects of Taylorism. Under the domination of capital,the latter expropriates the workers’ knowledge and reducesthem to subjection; under the Soviet regime, “Taylorism,”taken over by the workers, ensures reappropriation by theworkers of a body of knowledge which they apply collectivelyin order to master the process of production together.88

In Lenin’s writings about the Taylor system between 1918and 1922 two ideas constantly recur: that of the workers mas-tering technique and the “science of work,” whereby they


would dominate the production process by learning to “workbetter,” and that of a reduction in the working day, madepossible by increased productivity, which would enable theworkers to take charge of affairs of state in a concrete way. Theattempts made to “transform” the Taylor system into a“Soviet” system failed. Outwardly, this failure was due to theexisting forms of labor discipline and the role played by theone-and-only manager and the specialists who kept the direc-tion and organization of the production process in their hands.More profoundly, it was due to the very nature of “Taylorism,”which “codifies” the separation of manual from mental work(in conformity with the tendencies of the capitalist mode ofproduction), and is therefore incapable of doing away with thisseparation, for that implies collective initiative in a continuousprocess of transforming the production process, and notmerely the “appropriation” of “knowledge” formed on thebasis of the preliminary separation of manual from mentalwork.

However, the failure to create “Soviet Taylorism” does notmean that the Soviet Union did not see repeated attempts toimplement the Taylor system, or some elements of this sys-tem, on the initiative of various organs.

These attempts were often made by the managements oflarge enterprises, who promoted time-and-motion study and,on the basis of the results obtained, altered the way work wasorganized in the workshops and laid down norms for thefulfillment of the various tasks. (I shall come back later to thisproblem of the fixing of work norms, which cannot be iden-tified merely with “Taylorism.”)

The idea of a “Soviet Taylorism” to be undertaken by theworkers themselves or by their organizations was, neverthe-less, not lost sight of during the NEP period. At the end of1922 the Central Trades Union Council set up a “centrallabour institute” for the purpose of popularizing “the scien-tific organisation of work” (NOT, from Nauchnaya Organizat-siya Truda). One of the heads of this institute, Gastev, was aformer member of Proletkult.89

Not long after the foundation of this institute, another


former member of Proletkult, Kerzhentsev, denounced its ac-tivity, because he saw in it the devising of an instrument toexercise pressure on every worker. Kerzhentsev then formedthe “League of Time,” which he placed under the aegis ofNOT but with the aim of developing among the workersthemselves a movement for “more rational” use of time. TheLeague blamed the CLI for trying to “civilise” the workers“from above,” by “creating an aristocracy of the workingclass, the high priest of N.O.T.” 90

Eventually, in 1924, at the insistence of the Party leader-ship, the two movements merged, but, even when thus united,they failed to play much of a role. What they actually did wasconcerned much more with the introduction of a sort ofspeeded-up vocational training than with the organization ofwork and the establishment of work norms. The CLI claimedto be able to train a “skilled” worker in three months, insteadof the twelve months required by the factory training schools.Its methods were approved by a resolution of the Party’s CCon March 11, 1926.91 What was actually involved, with a viewto rapid industrialization, was the quick training of “detailworkers” who were not given any overall view of technology.

At the beginning of 1928 Gastev, who was still the head ofthe CLI, confirmed this orientation when he said:

The time has gone beyond recall when one could speak of thefreedom of the worker in regard to the machine, and still more inregard to the enterprise as a whole. . . . Manoeuvres and mo-tions at the bench, the concentration of attention, the movementof the hands, the position of the body, these elementary aspectsof behaviour become the cornerstone. Here is the key to the newculture of work, the key to the serious cultural revolution.92

These conceptions of the CLI 93 were attacked by N. Chap-lin, spokesman of the Komsomol, who declared that this in-stitute wanted to turn the worker into a mere “adjunct of themachine, not a creator of socialist production,” and that Gastev’sideas were the same as those of Ford, the American motor-car manufacturer.94


However, as a result of the pressure of the industrializationprocess in the form which it then took, the CLI’s conceptionsprevailed. They were approved, in practice, by the November1928 meeting of the CC.95 Finally, after the Sixteenth PartyConference, in April 1929, had approved the Five-Year Plan,criticism of these conceptions was no longer expressed, exceptepisodically.

Actually, the role of the CLI in the organization of work andthe fixing of norms remained minimal. Thus, in 1928, theOutline of Political Economy by Lapidus and Ostrovityanovmentioned the role which the institute could play, in raisingoutput, in a situation when “the very methods used by theworkers in their work are frequently out of date. . . . Theproductivity of labour also suffers by the fact that every workerexecutes several operations, and in doing so loses time in thechanging of instruments and materials and the adaptation ofmachinery.” 96

On the eve of the abandonment of NEP the idea of a “SovietTaylorism” had not been given up altogether, but no practicalsteps had been taken to implement it. What had taken shapewas a wages system based on norms laid down by the heads ofenterprises and the planning organs, under conditions thatvaried widely from case to case, and corresponding to a systemof piece wages, often accompanied by bonuses.

(b) Piece wages and work norms

The question of piece wages is considered here as a factor inthe immediate production process and a form whereby theagents of production are subjected to a certain pace and inten-sity of work. The general problem of the wage relationship, ofits integration in a commodity-producing system, and of theeffects of this system upon the general conditions of socialreproduction will be examined in the course of subsequentchapters.

The first decisions establishing the framework regulatingpiece wages which continued to prevail during most of the


NEP period were taken in the autumn of 1921. On September10 of that year a decree provided for wages to be fixed by wayof negotiation between workers and the enterprises that em-ployed them.97

This decision was linked with the establishment of the“financial autonomy” of enterprises (khozraschet), which willbe discussed later. It was explicitly aimed at relating thewages actually received by each worker to the “value” ofwhat he produced. It excluded from wages everything in thenature of “social maintenance,” which was to be the respons-ibility of the state’s organs and nothing to do with the separateenterprises. The state regulation of wages which existedunder “war communism” was thus abolished, with the onlyregulation left in force being the state’s fixing of a minimumwage.

Wage negotiations permitted the making of individual con-tracts, but, from November 1921 collective agreements werealso negotiated between the trade unions, on the one hand,and, on the other, the managements of enterprises or theeconomic adminstrations.98

The arrangements thus made allowed the enterprises andthe economic administrations to vary the numbers employedin accordance with the volume of production to be obtained,and to fix wages and work norms which would enable theenterprises to cover their costs, taking into account the pricesat which they bought and sold.99 Intervention by the tradeunions did not always suffice to limit the effects, on wages andnorms, of the right thus conferred on enterprises to vary themboth.

The pressure brought to bear by the heads of enterprises torevise work norms in an upward direction (and so to reducethe actual earnings of those workers who were less successfulin fulfilling the new norms) was felt more than once during theNEP period, even before the problems of achieving a rapiddevelopment of industry were faced.

From 1924 on the Bolshevik Party showed itself favorable toa systematic extension of piece wages. A resolution adoptedby the CC in August of that year emphasized the need to


increase the productivity of labor, required that there beperiodical revision of work norms and piece rates, and calledfor removal of the existing restrictions on payment of bonusesfor exceeding the norms.100 The trade unions, which, up tothat time, had maintained a certain reserve where piece wageswere concerned, now declared themselves more and more infavor of an extensive use of material incentives.101

During the months that followed, the managements of en-terprises carried out a general revision of work norms—without any improvement in equipment or even any seriousmodification in the way work was organized. In 1924–1925 theproductivity of labor per person-day increased by 46 per-cent.102

The pressure for higher productivity of labor (above all, forhigher intensity of labor) led to a substantial increase in indus-trial accidents: in the mines they rose from a rate of 1,095 per10,000 in 1923–1924 to 1,524 per 10,000 in 1924–1925.103 Theextension of piece wages and the raising of the norms imposedby managements provoked strong resistance from the workingclass. At the end of 1925 the Fourteenth Party Congress rec-ognized that mass strikes had taken place without the tradeunions, the Party organs, or the economic organizations havingbeen informed: “the trade unions’ lack of concern for theworkers” was condemned, together with the “unnatural blocbetween trade unions, the Party and the Red managers.” 104

The workers’ resistance to revision of the norms had as itschief consequence an upward revision of wage rates. Workers’earnings increased by between 10 and 30 percent in 1924–1925. In September 1925 the actual average monthly wagewas 51 roubles, whereas the average wage provided for byGosplan for September 1926 was 48 roubles.105 This is a fact ofgreat importance: it shows clearly that the actual level ofwages depended more directly upon the course of workers’struggles than upon the decisions taken by the planning or-gans.

In fact, these increases in wages appear to have been theprice that the managements of enterprises had to pay in orderto get acceptance of what then seemed the main concern,


namely, generalization of the system of norms and piecewages. And this generalization did indeed make progress. In1925 between 50 and 60 percent of the workers in large-scaleindustry and mining were paid at piece rates.106 In 1928 aninquiry carried out in a certain number of large-scale indus-tries showed that between 60 and 90 percent of the workerswere on piece rates.107

The extension of piece wages also encountered a certainamount of resistance within the Party. This began among therank and file, with Communists joining in “unofficial strikes”and being threatened with expulsion for doing so,108 but it wasexpressed also in leading circles, even among those who sup-ported the line of the majority in the Political Bureau. Thus, atthe end of 1925, at the Fourteenth Party Congress, A. An-dreyev, while supporting the resolution in favor of piecewages, described this system as a capitalist method which hadto be made use of for the time being, “because of the technicalinferiority of our equipment.” 109

During the entire NEP period, indeed, resort to payment atpiece rates was basically regarded as a transient measure dic-ated by circumstances. This attitude was still being givenclear expression in 1928 by Lapidus and Ostrovityanov, whenthey wrote that lack of labor discipline among the workers

forces the Soviet organs (in agreement with the trade unions) toensure that the very forms of wages should incite them to in-creased diligence. This explains the existence of standards ofoutput and piece-work payment in Soviet state industry. Obvi-ously, in distinction from the capitalist system, these measuresare of a temporary character in Soviet Russia; as the socialistconsciousness of the worker is developed and as the old indi-vidualist outlook is outlived, both piecework and the compulsoryminimum standard will become unnecessary.110

The implications of the system of norms and piece ratesobviously varied in accordance with the concrete conditionsunder which the norms and rates were determined. From thispoint of view the year 1926—the first year of the “reconstruc-tion period,” which saw the start of a policy of acceleratedindustrial development—was a decisive year.


Until then, the norms and the wage rates corresponding tothem had mainly been fixed by collective agreements (at thelevel of branches of industry, of regions, of trusts or of enter-prises) which gave rise to very little argument between theeconomic organs and the trade unions, and had to take intoaccount the reactions of the workers concerned, who wereprobably consulted—at production conferences, for instance.The fixing of rates and norms was thus directly influenced, upto a certain point, by the concrete conditions in which theproduction units functioned and by the attitudes taken up bythe workers in these units. In spite of this, the economic organs(which were called upon by the Party to bring down the cost ofproduction) were far from heeding the workers’ aspirations, towhich the unions (often connected with the managements ofenterprises) gave only partial expression, and so it happenedthat the norms were increased to such an extent that theworkers’ monthly earnings suffered reduction. This was thecase in 1926, when the Party, in a declaration issued on August16, denounced the “masked wage-reductions” which hadbeen effected in this way.111

The Party then decided to take charge of the decisive factorsin the fixing of wages, so that the establishment of norms andwage rates became the result of decisions taken previously atthe highest level, and the role of the collective agreements wasconsiderably reduced.

After September 1926 the procedure followed was formallythis. The PB, after discussion with the VSNKh and the tradeunions, fixed the growth rates for the coming year so far asproductivity and wages were concerned, together with therelations between them, and these rates then became part ofthe economic plan. Collective agreements came into the pic-ture only in a second phase. They were concluded betweenthe industrial trusts and the corresponding unions, and tookaccount of the planned targets, being concerned not merelywith wages, as had been the case up to then, but also withproductivity and production norms.

As a result of this procedure, norms came increasingly to be fixed without regard to the concrete conditions under which


enterprises functioned, and their actual organization. Theytended to become a constraint imposed from above upon theagents of the production process. Collective agreements be-came mainly a mere means of confirming and specifying thetargets which had been laid down as a whole by the planningorgans.

During the last months of 1926 the trade-union press pub-lished a number of articles expressing fear lest collectiveagreements be transformed into instruments for imposing onthe workers wage rates, norms, and working conditions whichhad been decided, in practice, by the economic plan, withoutregard to any negotiations.112

What was to be seen, in fact, in 1926, the first year of theperiod of industrial reconstruction, was a process of increas-ing restriction of the role played by the trade unions and thetrade-union committees in the enterprises in the fixing ofwages and working conditions. In 1927 there were conflictsover this issue between the unions and the VSNKh, whichwere settled by the Commissariat of Labor. In October 1927the VSNKh and the Central Trades Union Council declaredtheir intention to solve by common consent the problemsarising from the roles played by the plan and by collectiveagreements, respectively, in the fixing of wages and norms.Collective agreements continued, in principle, to be dis-cussed in the factories, but at meetings which were held inorder to impart information, not to take decisions.

During 1927–1928 these workers’ meetings exercised a cer-tain amount of influence upon the content of the collectiveagreements, but from the autumn of 1928 on, when the princi-ple of one-person management was reinforced, their role wasreduced. In autumn 1928 the pre-eminence of the plan overcollective agreements was affirmed by Gosplan and the Com-missariat of Labor. Thereafter, when collective agreementswere concluded, discussion of norms and wage rates playedonly a secondary role.113

Nevertheless, the reduction in the role of the trade unionsand the collective agreements in the fixing of norms and wagescannot be equated with “establishment of control” by theplanning organs over the movement of wages and of produc-


tivity. The workers, though no longer called upon to partici-pate concretely in the fixing of wages and work norms, resistedto some extent such increases in productivity as they consid-ered unacceptable, and often succeeded in securing wagesthat were higher than had been provided for by the plans. Thedisparities between the “targets” of the plans and the actualevolution of wages and output enable us to perceive oneaspect of the workers’ struggles, although these disparitieswere due not only to such struggles, but also to defects in theway production and the supply of raw materials to enterpriseswas organized, and the unrealistic character of some of thetasks laid down by the plans, which had not been submitted togenuine mass discussion in the enterprises.

In all events, the way of fixing production norms whichbecame increasingly predominant toward the end of the NEPperiod—in connection with the aims of a rapid process of in-dustrialization conceived in a centralized way at the level ofthe state’s technical organs—was not favorable either torealism in planning or to support by the mass of the workersfor the targets fixed where output and wages were concerned.The bottlenecks resulting from this state of affairs were acause of internal imbalances in industry and failures to fulfillthe plans for reducing industrial costs,114 and this increasedthe contradictions between industry and agriculture and be-tween industry’s need for finance and its capacity to accumu-late. These factors contributed to aggravating the final crisis ofNEP. Moreover, the introduction of piece rates, material in-centives, and wage differentials brought about splits withinworking groups. It strengthened individualism and led to de-mands for wage increases, because the lower-paid workersfound their position all the less acceptable when they saw thatothers were getting much higher wages for the same numberof hours’ work.

(c) Splits in the working groups andinequality of wages

The inequality of wages that existed under the NEP corre-sponded not merely to the introduction of piece rates but also,


and more profoundly, to the hierarchical structure of the “col-lective laborer,” to the very form of the labor process and thetype of differentiation that existed between the agents ofproduction.

This differentiation had its origins in history (in the form ofhe labor process in the former capitalist enterprises and itseffects on the structure of the working class), but it was repro-duced and transformed under the impact of class struggles.These either modified or consolidated the historically givenstructures of the labor process. In view of the inadequacy ofthe information we possess concerning the changes, or theabsence of changes, in the characteristics of the labor pro-cesses, a study of the way wage differentials evolved canprovide us with valuable pointers in this regard.

The first thing we observe is that the introduction of NEPand resumption of industrial production was accompanied bya widening of the spread of wage levels, which tended to copythe prewar pattern. Thus, whereas in 1920 (a year when indus-try was almost paralyzed) a skilled worker earned, on theaverage, only 4 percent more than an unskilled laborer, in1922 the gap between their respective earnings was 65 per-cent.115 In 1924 the first category of wages was, on the average,twice as large as the second.116 These overall figures can beillustrated from an investigation carried out in a foundry inMoscow in March 1924, which showed that an unskilled la-borer earned 16 to 40 roubles a month, whereas a founderearned 31.95. In this same enterprise, a head of a departmentearned 79.67 roubles, and the manager of the whole enterprise116.08 roubles.117 Moreover, the heads of enterprises receivedspecial bonuses and percentages and enjoyed various benefitsin kind. At that time there were, in general, seventeen levelsof wages, and the ratio of the lowest to the highest was 1:5. Itcould even be 1:8, with the highest rates being paid to theadministrative and technical personnel.118

Between 1924 and 1926 inequalities in wages tended toincrease, being accentuated by the practice of paying piecewages and awarding bonuses. A struggle developed betweenthose who were for reducing these inequalities and those who


saw them as corresponding to a “necessity.” Thus, in March1926, at the Seventh Congress of the Komsomol, one of theleaders of this organization declared: “Among the young . . .the tendency toward equalisation is highly developed: tomake all workers, skilled and unskilled, equal. The mood issuch that young workers come to us and say that we do nothave state enterprises, enterprises of a consistently socialisttype as defined by Lenin, but that what we have is exploita-tion.”119

According to an investigation carried out in March 1926,workers’ wages were often between 13 and 20 roubles amonth, while a manager could be getting as much as 400roubles (plus various material privileges in the form of hous-ing, a car, and so on). For technicians and managers who wereParty members the level of wages was usually a little lower,but on the average it came to 187.9 roubles for managers.120

The Seventh Trades Union Congress (December 1926)echoed the discontent of the less skilled workers. Tomsky,chairman of the Central Trades Union Council, said in thisconnection: “In future we must work towards reducing thegap between the wages of the skilled worker and those of theordinary worker.” 121

No clear line on this question emerged at that time. Whereasin 1927 the position of the trade unions and that of the Con-gress of Soviets tended to favor a reduction in inequality, theFifth Komsomol Conference condemned the “egalitarian aspi-rations” of the “backward sections of working-class youth.”122

Toward the end of the NEP period the differences in wagesobtaining in the working class constituted a source of divisionand discontent, especially among the youth. At the EighthKomsomol Congress a delegate did not shrink from saying thatsome workers were “strutting about like peacocks” whileothers were almost “beggars.”123 At the end of 1928 the EighthTrades Union Congress tried to deal afresh with the problem,but the Party, which was more and more concerned withencouraging a larger number of workers to learn a trade, con-demned the critical attitude to differentials. As we know, thetrade-union leadership elected by this Eighth Congress was


eliminated in 1929. A few years later, the positions adopted bythe Eighth Trades Union Congress were to be stigmatized asthe symptom of an “extensive development of petty-bourgeoisegalitarianism.” 124

Generally speaking, despite some contrary currents duemainly to pressure exerted by the worst-off strata of the work-ing class, and by the youth, it was the tendency to consolidateinequality in wages that predominated during the NEPperiod. This tendency was linked with the reproduction ofhierarchical forms in the immediate production process, but itwas also reinforced by certain ideological notions, two ofwhich were particularly important.

The first of these related to a distinction that was frequentlydrawn between workers who had been in industry for a longtime and had acquired a trade, and those who were more orless “casual workers,” laborers recently arrived from the coun-try, often destined to return there, and still impregnated with“peasant mentality.” It was essentially the first of thesecategories that the Party and the trade unions looked upon asthe “real proletariat,” whose material interests (and so, whosecomparatively high wages) had to be defended: they consti-tuted the firmest pillar of Soviet power. The material interestsof the other workers often seemed like those of a mere semi-proletariat, which ought, of course, to be safeguarded, but morefor reasons of social justice than for strictly political reasons.

The second of these notions tended to cause a relativelylarge differentiation between wages to lie accepted as “neces-sary.” This differentiation was usually justified by reference tothe “technical level,” the decisive role of the skilled workersin a production process which was still of a semihandicraftnature, with machines and mechanization entering into it verylittle. This notion was expressed, for example, in December1926 by Tomsky at the Seventh Trades Union Congress. Aftercommenting that in the USSR wage differentials were “colos-sal” and not to be compared with those observable in WesternEurope, he added: “One of the causes [of this situation] is thatour technical equipment is still very backward. Individualskill, craft tradition and so on still play too big a role: the


automatic machines which simplify the worker’s task andbring in automatic methods are too little used.” 125

The predominant factor justifying the big differences inwage levels thus seemed to be “technical” in character, and soreduction of these differences seemed to depend mainly on“development of the productive forces.”

(d) Socialist emulation

Although what was characteristic of the NEP was a strongtendency to reproduction of the existing forms of the produc-tion process, some movements did develop which, to varyingdegrees, sought to challenge these forms, or seemed capableof doing this. This was one significance of the attempts madeto develop a “Soviet Taylorism,” 126 and, even more so, of thestruggles in the first months of 1928 directed toward effectinga certain change in production relations.

For a time, the development of socialist emulation, too,seemed likely to lead to a challenge to the existing form of theproduction process. This was mainly true of the period from1926 until the second half of 1928. The development in ques-tion deserves to be examined, even if only cursorily, for it is allthe richer in lessons because the defeat suffered by the revo-lutionary aspects of the movement, and the reasons for thisdefeat, were closely linked with the final crisis of the NEP.

The movement for socialist emulation was, at the start, anattempt by the advanced elements of the working class to takein hand certain factors in the production process, so as tospeed up the growth of industrial production. It had, undoubt-edly, a “productionist” aspect, but at the same time it indi-rectly called into question the authority of management and ofthe technical cadres.127 It originated as a movement led by asection of the young workers and encouraged by the Kom-somol. This was the situation in the autumn of 1926. 128

During 1927 the leading economic organs, especiallythe VSNKh, increasingly came to see in this movement ameans of raising the productivity of labor while keepingwithin financially tolerable bounds the investment effort


called for by the two variants of the First Five-Year Plan thatwere then being drawn up. It was principally a matter ofencouraging the workers to increase the intensity of labor, butalso to “rationalize” the production process: this was, indeed,a period when the active role of the production conferenceswas developing.

In the autumn of 1927, however, the components and char-acteristics of the movement of socialist emulation tended toalter: rank-and-file initiatives were gradually pushed into thebackground by systematic intervention on the part of the cen-tral economic organs, which called for “emulation betweenheads of enterprises, trusts, etc.” 129 In this way emulation onthe national scale and emulation at the local level were or-ganized as parallel processes. On its part, the Komsomol con-tinued to promote a socialist emulation that mainly took theform of “Communist Saturdays,” when workers worked with-out pay, and of undertakings to increase production or to carryout exceptional tasks, these undertakings being adopted byteams or groups of workers who formed “brigades” of “shock-workers” (udarniki).

It is very hard to distinguish, in the movement which de-veloped in 1928, between the element of genuine enthusiasm,and sometimes of challenge to the authority of the heads ofenterprises, and the element of mere adhesion to a produc-tivity campaign organized from above, which the workers feltmore or less obliged to support.

In any case, in the summer of 1927 the movement was givena certain institutional character by the creation, through adecree of July 27, of the title of “Hero of Labor.” This was,moreover, no mere title: attached to it were material advan-tages such as exemption from taxes, priority in getting some-where to live, a pension, and so on.130

The drift toward a more “managerial” form of emulation isto be seen in the decree of June 14, 1928, which credited anenterprise with between 25 and 50 percent of the savingsrealized through emulation, and charged the head of the en-terprise with responsibility for using this credit in conformingwith certain guidelines relating mainly to “rationalization” of


production and improvement in the conditions of labor.131

September 1928 saw the creation of the order of the RedBanner of Labor, which could be awarded not only to indi-viduals but also to enterprises, institutions, and groups ofworkers.132

On the eve of the official adoption of the First Five-YearPlan—and even more so after it had been adopted—the “pro-ductionist” character of the socialist emulation campaign wasaccentuated. The publication in Pravda on January 20, 1929,of a previously unpublished article by Lenin (which he hadwritten in January 1918 but had decided not to publish at thetime of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations), entitled “How to Or-ganise Competition?” 133 was the starting point of a vast cam-paign for organizing shock-brigades and signing pledges toexceed work norms. Thereafter, a large number of factoriesand mines entered the emulation campaign, which becamecombined with the drive launched since the end of 1928 totighten up labor discipline.

The dual aspect of this movement for emulation was wellreflected in the article by Stalin which Pravda published onMay 22, 1929. He showed that socialist emulation could bebased only on the enthusiasm of the working masses, on the“energy, initiative and independent activity of the masses,”and that it must liberate “the colossal reserves latent in thedepths of our system”;134 but Stalin also mentioned in thisarticle that the emulation movement was threatened by thosewho sought to “canalise” it, to “centralise” it, to “deprive it ofits most important feature—the initiative of the masses.” 135

In actuality, the “centralizing” aspect ultimately triumphedover the “mass initiative” aspect. The latter was held back bythe limits imposed upon it by the principle of one-personmanagement, the targets of a plan decided from above, and the“technical regulations” laid down by the engineers.

Gradually, emulation came to have the effect of settingagainst each other different groups of workers, and even indi-vidual workers: the “best performances” were used by theheads of enterprises to revise work norms upward and increasethe intensity of labor. The Soviet press of the time mentioned


cases of this sort, in order to condemn them,136 but this did notprevent them from recurring. The warnings put out by theTrades Union Council137 provided no more serious an obstacleto this tendency, which was encouraged by the fact that theleading economic organs were calling on the enterprises to“overfulfill” the plan.

Production did indeed increase, but the Central TradesUnion Council declared that this increase was being achievedat the cost of “violation of the labour laws and collectiveagreements and worsening of the situation of the workingclass.” 138

Toward the end of 1929 the distortions undergone by“socialist emulation” caused growing discontent among theworkers, for the raising of the norms entailed a reduction inthe earnings of those who could not fulfill them, while “pro-duction commitments” undertaken without genuine consulta-tion of the masses led managements to cancel the workers’ restdays over a period of several weeks.139

The reports in the Smolensk archives show that from May1929 on there were numerous manifestations of workers’ dis-satisfaction with the “production commitments” and in-creased work norms decided upon one-sidedly by the man-agements of their places of work. This dissatisfaction evengave rise to strikes, especially in the mines.140 A generalreport “on the position of the working class in the WesternRegion” shows that, very often, the workers were not evenkept informed of “production commitments,” or of the “chal-lenges” that their enterprises threw down: they did not knowwhat was expected of them, but they were aware that thenorms had been increased without any increase in wages, andthey consequently took up a negative attitude.141 This reportconcludes:

Such attitudes can be attributed in the first place to workers whoare connected with agriculture and who have recently come tothe factories. This category participates least of all in productivelife and to some degree influences the backward workers. It isnecessary to say that at the present moment, in connexion withthe survey of socialist competition which has been carried out in


the enterprises by the economic organs and their apparatuses, ina number of places there is exceptional apathy and sluggish-ness.142

The situation thus described prevailed in most regions to-ward the end of 1929. This situation was closely connectedwith the fact that the fixing of production targets had becometo an ever greater degree a “management concern,” and thatmanagements had become involved in a sort of “targets race”which developed far away from the reality of the workshops,building sites, and mines, a circumstance that favored theflourishing of unrealistic aims. That period saw the “growth”of a whole series of production targets, with consequent revi-sion of the plans: thus, the target for production of steel,which, under the original plan, was to have reached 10 millionmetric tons at the end of the Five-Year Plan, “grew” to 17million metric tons.143 In the eyes of the workers who werefamiliar with the realities involved, this target was unlikely tobe achieved—and, in fact, it was not achieved.144

The fixing of unrealizable targets had a negative effect onthe enthusiasm of most of the workers. Enthusiasm did notentirely evaporate, of course, but it became confined to aminority who were capable of making great efforts whichenabled them to beat production records. This, however, wasnot enough to sustain a real emulation campaign developingon a mass scale.

In the end, the emulation movement which, at the outset,had seemed the possible starting point of a genuine transfor-mation of the labor process, did not really develop in thatdirection. It did not become that “communist method ofbuilding socialism, on the basis of the maximum activity of thevast masses of the working people” which Stalin had spokenof in his article of May 22, 1929.145 It did not bring a large-scale liberation of new productive forces.

The revolutionary aspect of the emulation movementgradually died out, through not taking as its target a radicaltransformation of production relations. Increasingly, it wasdirected toward quantitative production targets, and was takenover by the heads of enterprises and the economic ap-


paratuses. They used it above all as a means to secure revisionof work norms. It thus became an instrument for intensifyinglabor—hence the indifference and even sometimes the hostil-ity of a section of the workers toward a movement which wasnot in any deep sense their own.146

The reasons for the setback to the mass character of themovement were many. Most important was the one-sidedly“productionist” aspect which it came to assume, as a whole, andwhich led to its subordination, above all, to the existing rela-tions of hierarchy and discipline, which were even strength-ened after the end of 1928. The profound split within theworking groups—between a minority of skilled workers enjoy-ing prestige, responsibility, and incomes markedly higherthan the others, and a majority of unskilled workers, oftenlooked upon with mistrust (because of their peasant origin)and restricted to poorly paid fragmentary tasks—was also animportant obstacle to transforming the emulation movementinto a genuine mass movement. This split was closely boundup with the hierarchical general structure of the enterprisesand the role assigned to the managers and engineers.

The socialist emulation movement failed, therefore, to leadto a socialist transformation of the productive forces. The con-cept of such a transformation was, indeed, never clearly for-mulated at that time, even though it was hinted at, for exam-ple, by Stalin when he spoke of “the colossal reserves latent inthe depths of our system.”147

Under these conditions, a revolutionary transformation ofthe production relations and of the productive forces could nottake place. The growth of industrial production turned out tobe fundamentally dependent on the accumulation of newmeans of production, the modernizing of equipment, themaintenance and development of material incentives (piecerates, bonuses, etc.). All this led to the adoption of a plan forextremely heavy investment in industry—which industry wasincapable of financing from its own resources. In this way theburdens that the Soviet state’s economic policy tended to layupon the peasantry were made heavier, and the contradictionsbetween town and country characteristic of the final crisis ofthe NEP were intensified.


In order to appreciate more fully the specific forms assumedby the aggravation of contradictions within the industrial sec-tor itself, we need to analyze the way in which state-ownedindustry was integrated in the general process of reproductionof the conditions of production.

Notes

1. See above , p. 77.2. Calculated from Kontrolnye tsifry (1929–1930), pp. 422–423.3. See below, pp. 275 ff.4. M. Dobb, Soviet Economic Development, p. 143.5. See volume I of the present work, especially pp. 464 ff.6. See Marx, in The Poverty of Philosophy, where he blames

Proudhon for putting in the forefront the juridical form of prop-erty (Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 6, p. 197: “todefine bourgeois property is nothing else than to give an exposi-tion of all the social relations of bourgeois production. To try togive a definition of property as of an independent relation . . .can be nothing but an illusion of metaphysics or jurisprudence.”See Marx’s letter to Annenkov, December 28, 1846: “In the realworld, . . . the division of labour and all M. Proudhon’s othercategories are social relations forming in their entirety what isknown today as property; outside these relations, bourgeoisproperty is nothing but a metaphysical or juristic illusion”[Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 44]).

7. See volume I of the present work, pp. 155 ff.8. Lenin, CW, vol. 27, p. 259: “The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet

Government.”9. Ibid., pp. 249, 268.

10. Lapidus and K. Ostrovityanov, Outline, p. 472.11. Ibid.12. VKP(b) v rezolyutsiyakh (1941), pp. 626-629, quoted in Carr,

Socialism, vol. I, p. 387.13. Torgovo-Prom yshlennaya Gazeta, August 23–26, 1926.14. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 316–317, 319–320. The

workers’ resistance to revision of the norms led at that time tostoppages and strikes which were not authorized by the tradeunions.


15. VII-oy Syezd Professionalnykh Soyuzov SSSR (1927), pp. 467,745.

16. Direktivy K.P.S.S. i Sovyetskogo Pravitelstva po khozyaistven-nym voprosam (1957), vol. I, pp. 666–672, and Carr and Davies,Foundations, vol. I, pt. 1, pp. 341–342, and pt. 2, p. 492.

17. Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta, August 18, 1927.18. Trud, January 6, 1928.19. Lenin, CW, vol. 33, pp. 184 ff.20. Ibid., vol. 33, p. 189.21. Ibid.22. Ibid.23. Ibid., vol. 33, pp. 190–191.24. Ibid., vol. 33, p. 190.25. Ibid., vol. 33, p. 191.26. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, p. 792 (my emphasis—C. B.).27. V.K.P.(b.) v profsoyuzakh (1940), pp. 236–240, quoted in Carr,

Socialism, vol. I, p. 400, n. 1.28. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 65. “Management devia-

tion” is given as an approximate translation of the Russianexpression khozyaistvenny uklon.

29. In its issue of July 15, 1926, the journal Bolshevik noted thatduring 1925 the production-conference movement had suffereda decline and had been looked on with disfavor as encouraginga “management deviation” (pp. 45–58).

30. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, p. 99.31. Stalin, Works, vol. 8, pp. 147–148. It will be observed that the

production conferences are not assigned any managerialfunctions. Their role was, above all, to give aid and support tohe Party and the government.

32. Istorichesky Arkhiv, no. 2 (1960), pp. 89-90, quoted in Carr andDavies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 569.

33. Trud, July 18, 1926.34. These were the resolution “On the Country’s Economic Situa-

tion and the Tasks of the Party” (K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol.2, pp. 173 ff., especially sec. 3, pp. 177–179); and the resolution

detailed passages on the production meetings (ibid., pp. 196–199).

35. Ibid., p. 179. The term “direct participation” is noteworthy, inthat it marks a break with the resolution of the Eleventh Con-gress: see above, p. 216 ff.

on the trade unions (ibid., p. 191 ff.), which included fairly


36. Ibid., p. 198.37. Ibid., p. 177.38. Ibid., p. 190.39. XV-taya Konferentsiya VKP(b) (1927), pp. 276–283, 298–299,

317, 346–347, 356, 408–410; quoted in Carr and Davies, Founda-tions, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 570, ns. 1 and 2.

40. VII-oy Syezd Professionalnykh Soyuzov SSSR (1927), pp.58–59.

41. XVI-taya Konferentsiya VKP(b) (1962), p. 814, n. 279; quoted inCarr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 570, n. 6.

42. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 383-384.43. Stalin, Works, vol. 11, pp. 30 ff.44. Ibid., p. 37.45. Ibid., pp. 39–41.46. Ibid., pp. 57 ff.47. Ibid., pp. 73 ff.48. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, pp. 580 ff.49. The Smolensk archives enable us to obtain an overall view of

what was called at the time the “Smolensk scandal.” They showthat 13.1 percent of all Party members in the region were ex-pelled as a result of scandal. The investigations carried out onbehalf of the CCC revealed the corruption prevailing amongsome of the provincial cadres, while others were convicted of“drunkenness” and “sexual license.” The reports of these in-vestigations showed that in one of the most important factoriesin the region the women workers had “to submit to the fore-man’s demands,” while, in another, seven workers had killedthemselves owing to the indifferent attitude of the Party leadersto their complaints. This “affair” gave rise to an inquiry by theCC, which held numerous meetings in various factories in theregion (Fainsod, Smolensk, pp. 48–52).

50. Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p. 74.51. Ibid., p. 75.52. Ibid., p. 75.53. Ibid., pp. 75–76 (my emphasis—C. B.).54. Ibid., pp. 76–78.55. This shift of emphasis is clearly apparent if we compare the

orientations of spring 1928, regarding the need for criticism ofthe cadres, engineers, administrators, etc. (not excluding criti-

the warnings against a mistrustful attitude to heads of enter-cism which was “only 5 or 10 percent true” [ibid., p. 36]), with


prises and economic organizations contained in the report ofApril 13, 1926 in which Stalin appealed for these leaders to be“surrounded by an atmosphere of confidence,” and forvoidance of excessive readiness to criticize them—”a bad habit[that] must be dropped once and for all” (Stalin, Works, vol. 8, p.146).

56. Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p. 62; p. 376, n. 14.57. One of the resolutions adopted by the plenum of April 6-11,

1928, provided for changes in the management of enterprises.However, the scope of these changes was limited (K.P.S.S. vrezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 386–387).

58. Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p. 63 (my emphasis—C. B.).59. Ibid., pp. 63–64.60. The Smolensk inquiry revealed numerous cases of this sort. At

Shakhty the inquiry showed that the limitation of the workingday in the mines to six hours was often not respected, any more

61. This manifesto was read on October 15, 1927, by Rykov, thenchairman of the Sovnarkom, to the TsK of the USSR (Pravda,October 16 and 18, 1927).

62. The archives of the Smolensk Regional Committee of the Partyshow that this committee had to deal with workers’ discontentwhen the transition to three-shift work was made. A factory inthis region sent a delegation to Moscow to protest, and workers’meetings demanded that the measure be rescinded. It is notknown what response was given to these demands, but we doknow that they were numerous (Fainsod, Smolensk, pp. 51–52).

63. On these points see Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2,pp. 500–504.

64. Such complaints are to be found in the journal of the VSNKh(Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta), for example in the issue ofOctober 16, 1928, and in the official economic journalEkonomicheskoye obozreniye. See Carr and Davies, Founda-tions, vol. I, pt. 2, pp. 508–509.

65. Production by VSNKh-planned industry rose by 16.6 percent in192–1927, 26.3 percent in 1927–1928, and 23.7 percent in1928-1929 (Kontrolnye tsifry 1929–1930 gg., pp. 422–423, 503).

66. Prepriyatiye, no. 12 (1928), p. 12. The journal refers to the“one-person responsibility” of the manager, alleged to bethreatened with replacement by that of “the electors.”

67. Pravda, June 26, 1928, in Stalin, Works, vol. 11, pp. 133 ff.68. Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p. 138.

than were certain safety regulations (ibid., p. 64).


69. Ibid., pp. 140–141.70. Ibid., p. 139.71. Ibid., p. 139.72. Ibid., pp. 139–14073. Ibid., p. 143.74. Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta, November 30, 1928.75. VIII-oy Syezd Professionalnykh Soyuzov SSSR (1929), pp.

527–528.76. Direktivy (1957), vol. 2, pp. 18–19.77. Resheniya partii i pravitelstva, pp. 125–131, quoted in R.

Lorenz, Das Ende der Neuer Ökonomischer Politik, p. 213 andp. 274, n. 3. This writer also quotes A. Etchin, O yedinonachalii.

78. See note 76 above; also Fainsod, Smolensk, p. 309; and theremarks made on this subject by Robert Linhart, in Lénine, lespaysans, Taylor, pp. 167–168, n. 1

79. XVI-taya Konferentsiya VKP(b), (1962), pp. 72–73.80. See also below, pp. 346 ff.81. Trud, March 29; May 16; June 8, 11, and 20, 1929, quoted in S.

Schwarz, Les Ouvriers en Union Soviétique, pp. 503-505. (ThisFrench edition of Labor in the Soviet Union contains a newappendix dealing with the purging of the trade unions in 1929.)

82. Resheniya, pp. 125-131, quoted in Lorenz, Das Ende, p. 214.83. Resheniya, pp. 136-142.84. Marx, Capital (London), vol. 1, p. 482.85. A clear analysis of the “Taylor system” will be found in Harry

Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, pp. 85 ff.86. In his Lénine, les paysans, Taylor, Robert Linhart deals with a

number of aspects of this question; see especially pp. 77 ff.87. Lenin, CW, vol. 20, p. 154.88. See Linhart, Lénine, pp. 102, 110 ff., 134 ff.89. E. H. Carr, The Interregnum, p. 84, n. 4, and Socialism, vol. 1, p.

383.90. Trud, February 20 and 22, 1924.91. Direktivy, vol. 1 (1957), pp. 56–569.92. Pravda, February 10, 1928, quoted in Carr and Davies, Founda-

tions, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 478.93. It is to be observed that the supporters of these views could

avail themselves of certain formulations by Marx and Engels,especially what Engels wrote, during the winter of 1872–1873,in his article “On Authority”: “The automatic machinery of abig factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists whoemploy workers have ever been. . . . If man, by dint of his


knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces ofnature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjectinghim, in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotismindependent of all social organisation” (Marx, Engels and Leninon Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, pp. 101–102). In thisformulation, which expresses the correct view that “one cancommand Nature only by obeying it,” no account is taken of theform under which the production processes give material em-bodiment to scientific knowledge. As Marx frequently recalls,however, this form, and therefore also the nature of technicalchanges, is dominated by social relations.

94. Chaplin’s speech at the Eighth Komsomol Congress, quoted inCarr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 479.

95. V.K.P.(b) v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 305. Subsequent editions ofthis work do not reprint this resolution. See Carr and Davies,Foundations , vol. I, pt. 2, p. 479, n. 5.

96. Lapidus and Ostrovityanov, Outline, pp. 129–130.97. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 2, pp. 319–320.98. Ibid., p. 321.99. Consequently wages were at that time higher in enterprises

which could charge high prices (as was then the case with thetextile industry) than in others, such as the iron and steel indus-try. See A. G. Rashin, Zarabotnaya plata na vostanovitelnyperiod khozyaistva SSSR.

100. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, pp. 90–905.101. On the attitude of the trade unions, see Trud, August 23, and

September 17, 1924, and the discussions at the Sixth Congressof the Trade Unions (IV-oy Syezd Professionalnykh SoyuzovSSSR 1925). These discussions show that a minority of thedelegates were still opposed to unrestricted extension of piecewages. From February 1925 (see Trud, February 4, 1925) thetrade unions plunged into a campaign for piece wages to beintroduced on the widest possible scale (see Carr, Socialism,vol. I, p. 390, n. 4).

102. Planovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 2 (1926), p. 54; and Y. S. Rozenfeld,Promyshlennaya Politika SSSR, p. 361; Carr, Socialism, vol. I,pp. 391–392.

103. Leningradskaya Pravda, August 2, 1925, quoted in Carr,Socialism, vol. I, pp. 392–393.

104. XIV-y Syezd VKP(b) (1926), pp. 722–729, 785. The strikes re-ferred to were “unofficial” strikes, not recognized by the unions


and not reflected in statistics. Between 1924 and 1925 thenumber of workers “officially” on strike hardly increased andremained small: 43,000 in 1925, as against 42,000 in 1924 (VII-oy Syezd Professionalnykh Soyuzov SSSR [1927], p. 90). Thenumber of strikes officially recorded was small: 267 in 1924 (151of which in state-owned enterprises) and 196 in 1925 (of which99 occurred in state-owned enterprises). We have even lessinformation regarding the actual number and scope of strikes insubsequent years.

105. Planovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 1 (1926), p. 40, quoted in Carr,Socialism, vol. I, p. 395.

106. Sotsialisticheskoye Stroitelstvo SSSR (1934), p. 337. Accordingto another source, the percentage of workers receiving piecewages was as follows (for September of each year): 1923, 45.7;1924, 51.4; 1925,, 601; 1926, 61.3. See A. G. Rashin, Zarabot-naya, pp. 33-34, quoted in Carr, Socialism, vol. I, p. 392, n. 2.

107. Ekonomicheskoye Obozreniye, no. 10 (1929), p. 148, quoted inCarr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 534.

108. See, for example, Uglanov’s article in Pravda, October 4, 1925.109. XIV-y Syezd VKP(b) (1926), pp. 793 ff.110. Lapidus and Ostrovityanov, Outline, pp. 132–133. Twenty-six

years later, in 1954, the same Ostrovityanov, co-author of theofficial textbook of political economy, was to affirm that “insocialist economy piece rates provide the worker with themaximum interest in his work” (K. V. Ostrovityanov et al., Polit-ical Economy, p. 604). There was no longer any question of thesystem of piece wages being only “temporary.”

111. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 522.112. Ibid., pp. 523–524, and Trud, October 10 and 12, 1926.113. Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta and Trud, October 30, 1927;

Obzor deyatelnosti NKT SSSR za 1927–1928 gg., p. 71; Kon-trolnye tsifry 1928–1929 gg. (1929), p. 21; Carr and Davies,Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, pp. 494, 526–529.

114. See the table on p. 191.115. Gert Meyer, Studien zur Sozialökonomischen Entwicklung

Sowjetrusslands 1921–1923, p. 194, quoting S. G. Strumilin,Problemy Ekonomiki Truda, p. 388.

116. Ibid., p. 195, quoting A. Rashin, “K kharakteristike differ-entsiatsiya zarabotnoy platy v promyshlennosti,” VestnikTruda, no. 2 (1925), p. 50.

117. Ibid., p. 51, quoting the same source.


118. Ibid., p. 196, quoting several Soviet sources from this period.119. VII Syezd VLKSM (1926), p. 49, quoted in Carr and Davies,

Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 529.120. Rashin, Zarabotnaya plata, pp. 126–127, quoted in Carr,

Socialism, vol. I, pp. 380–381.121 VII-oy Syezd Professionalnykh Soyuzov SSSR (1927), p. 51.

122. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, pp. 529–531.123. VIII-oy Vsesoyuzny Syezd V.L.K.S.M. (1928), p. 37.124. Voprosy Truda, November–December 1932, p. 29.125. VII-oy Syezd Professionalnykh Soyuzov SSSR ( 1927), p. 51.126. See above, p. 237.127. See above, pp. 215, 219 ff.128. L. Rogachevskaya, Iz istorii rabochego klassa SSSR, pp. 152–

154, n. 4; and Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta, September 1,1927, quoted by Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p.513.

129. Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta, September 27, 1927, articleby Kuibyshev.

130. Sobranie Zakonov, no. 45 (1927), art. 456.131. Ibid., no. 42 (1928), art. 384, and no. 43, art. 387. This signified

an extension of what was called the “manager’s fund,” whichlater on played an even greater role as a means of stimulatingproduction (see Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, pp.512, 609–610).

132. Sobranie Zakonov, no. 59 (1928), arts 523 and 524.133. Lenin, CW, vol. 26, pp. 404–415.134. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, p. 116.135. Ibid., p. 115.136. For example Trud, May 30; August 2 and 6, 1929, quoted in

Schwarz, Labor in the Soviet Union, pp. 189, 190.137. Trud, July 25, 1929.138. Ibid., August 2, 1929.139. Voprosy Truda, no. 12 (1929), p. 47, quoted by Lorenz in his

thesis Das Ende, p. 230.140. Fainsod, Smolensk, p. 312, quoting VKP 250, pp. 38–47.141. Ibid., quoting VKP 300, p. 48.142. Ibid., p. 313, quoting VKP 300, pp. 49-50 (my emphasis—C. B.).143. See Krzhizhanovsky’s declaration at the beginning of 1929: “A

time has come which is bringing us achievements no-one haddreamed of” (Internationale Presse-Korrespondenz, no. 112[1929], p. 2648). See also Mezhlauk’s speech published in ibid.,no. 116 (1929), p. 2728.


144. Initially, the First Five-Year Plan provided for production of10.4 million metric tons of steel, but actual production in 1932was only 5.9 million metric tons (Bettelheim, La Planification,p. 288). In all the main fields—agricultural equipment, tractors,motor cars, etc.—the end of 1929 was marked by a growing gapbetween production targets and real production possibilities.

145. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, p. 115.146. What happened generally does not mean that socialist emula-

tion did not continue for some years to play an important rolelocally. This was the case especially in certain big building sitesand new centers of production (e.g., at the iron-and-steel com-bine at Magnitogorsk) where young workers were especiallynumerous.

147. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, p. 116.

266

4. The integration of state-owned industryin the overall process of reproduction ofthe conditions of production

While the socialist form of the enterprises belonging to theSoviet state does not suffice to determine the nature of therelations which are reproduced in the immediate productionprocess, it does not suffice either to determine the nature ofthe relations formed between these enterprises in the courseof the overall process of reproduction. These relations retain amore or less capitalistic character so long as they preserve theseparation between the direct producers and their means ofproduction and the separation of production units (or groups ofproduction units) from each other, this separation being both“transcended” and reproduced by the commodity relationswhich are established between the enterprises. The existenceof these relations simultaneously manifests and conceals theseparation between enterprises. When the economic plan im-poses from without “direct relations” between the productionunits, this is not enough to “do away with” the real separationthat exists between them, but merely modifies its form. Onlysocialist cooperation between the production units, a unifica-tion of the various immediate production processes basedupon the joint activity of the various working groups, can endthis separation and ensure dominance for socialist planning.

The dictatorship of the proletariat can create the politicaland ideological conditions for transition from the separateexistence of the production units to various forms of socialistcooperation and planning. However, this transition, which isone of the features of the transition to socialism, is not at all a“spontaneous” affair. It calls for a protracted class struggle


guided by a political line ensuring the victory of the socialistroad. In the absence of such a line the capitalist and commod-ity relations characteristic of the conditions of functioning ofthe production units and of the circulation of products amongthem will continue to be reproduced.

We have seen the extent to which this happened, under theNEP, as regards the social relations characteristic of the im-mediate production process. Let us now see what happenedwith regard to the forms of circulation of the products, thematerial basis of the overall process of reproduction of theconditions of production.

In order to concretize our examination of these forms, let usrecall, first, what the form of management of the state-ownedenterprises was that was established at the beginning of theNEP. It was essentially through this form (and the changes itunderwent) that the state-owned enterprises were integratedin the overall process of reproduction of the conditions ofproduction. This form of management was known as the sys-tem of “financial autonomy,” or “business accounting” (khoz-raschet).

To understand what was meant by the introduction of“financial autonomy” for the state-owned industrial enter-prises, we must recall how the latter operated under “warcommunism.” At that time the production program of suchindustrial enterprises as were still functioning was aimedabove all at satisfying the needs of the front, while ensuring aminimum supply of goods to the population. The problemspresented by the development of the productive forces, byaccumulation, and by diversification of production were thuseither “eliminated” or thrust into the background. Similarly,questions concerning costs of production were almost mean-ingless in a situation in which what mattered was to obtain atany cost the few products that could still be turned out. Underthese conditions the maximum degree of centralization of themanagement of industry was needed, with the state dictatingto the enterprises a certain number of priority targets.

The functioning of the economy seemed in those days to be


dominated by use value. The industrial sector looked like a“single state trust,” within which the labor force had to beused not independently by each enterprise but as a singlelabor force: labor appeared to be “directly social.” This washow the illusions of “war communism” arose—“direct transi-tion to communism,” immediate disappearance of money andof the wage relation, and so on.

The NEP was based on rejection of these illusions.1 It led tothe introduction of khozraschet, which implied that the state-owned enterprises came out openly as one of the spheres inwhich commodity and money relations were reproduced.However, the NEP offered no “answer” to the question ofhow these relations were to be transformed and eliminated.

I. The introduction and development ofkhozraschet

Khozraschet was introduced by a decree of the Sovnarkomdated August 9, 1921. This decree conferred “financial au-tonomy” on the state-owned enterprises.2 A resolution of theCouncil of Labor and Defense (CLD), dated August 12, 1921,specified that khozraschet implied separation of the enter-prises from the state, which entailed also separation of theenterprises from each other.3

After a phase of decentralization, begun in 1921, and thenone of temporary recentralization (introduced by a decree ofNovember 12, 1923), the management of enterprises was againdecentralized (decision by the Sovnarkom, August 24, 1926).At that time the VSNKh was taking over the general directionof state-owned industry and planning.4

The enterprise (that is, the economic unit possessing au-tonomy of management) coincided only exceptionally with aproduction unit—a factory, for instance. Most often, “financialautonomy” was accorded to a group of production units (a“union” of production units belonging to the same branch ofindustry, and, especially, a “Soviet trust”). Each factory, with


the exception of the largest of them, which were officiallystyled “enterprises,” depended on a “trust” or a “union.” Thetrusts and unions were usually the only state industrial organsin contact with the market. At the beginning of the NEP theydrew up programs of activity for the factories subordinate tothem, taking account mainly of production capacities and pos-sibilities for buying and selling. The factories, therefore,functioned as organs for carrying out a program laid down fromabove. However, the rise in industrial production during theNEP period was accompanied by a growth in the actual pow-ers granted to the managers of individual factories and transi-tion of the most important production units to “enterprise”status.

The principal characteristics of the way the state enterprisesfunctioned on the basis of khozraschet were as follows:

1. Each state-owned enterprise was given a fund of its own,which constituted its capital endowment (the word “capital”being explicitly used, e.g., in the reports of the VSNKh).5

2. Each state-owned enterprise bought its raw material andfuel, as well as its other means of production, and sold its ownproducts; consequently, it was integrated in commodity andmoney relations, in contrast to the situation that prevailedunder “war communism.”

3. Each enterprise was directly responsible for the em-ployment of its workers: it had to take its own decisions re-garding the number of wage earners to be employed and theconditions for the hiring and firing of these wage earners. Thisprinciple established new forms of separation between theworkers and their means of production.

4. The financing of the activity of each of the state-ownedenterprises was henceforth to depend essentially on its ownreceipts and on the banking system.

5. The possibilities for development of the various state-owned enterprises thus depended essentially on their capac-ity for self-financing and on their capacity to repay the loansthat they obtained either from Gosbank or from the specialistbanks which also belonged to the state.6


(a) Khozraschet at the beginning of theNEP

The actual change over by the enterprises to operation inaccordance with the principles of Khozraschet took place onlygradually, starting in the autumn of 1921. In the month ofOctober the state enterprises thus found themselves givenpermission to dispose freely of an increasing proportion ofwhat they produced, whereas previously their products hadbeen assigned in advance to a state organ which took deliveryof them by right.

In the autumn of 1922 the Civil Code endowed each enter-rise or trust with civil personality. This sometimes came tobe called their “juridical division.” Thereafter, each enter-prise or trust was able to undertake legal commitments, andbecame responsible for its commitments under civil law. Itscirculating capital could be confiscated if it did not honor itsobligations or pay its debts. By the end of 1922 nearly allenterprises were subject to khozraschet or, as people then stillsaid, to the “commercial regime.”

The establishment of khozraschet was crowned by the de-cree of April 10, 1923, which declared in its Article I that“state trusts are state industrial enterprises to which the stateaccords independence in the conduct of their operations inaccordance with the statute laid down for each enterprise, andwhich operate on principles of commercial accounting withthe object of earning a profit.” 7

This decree thus specified that the aim of the enterprisemust be to make a profit. It ascribed a certain amount ofcapital to each trust, and laid down the rules for the use ofprofits by the enterprises placed under the regime of khozras-chet. One share, the largest, was to be paid into the Treasury.Another share was to be placed in reserve, in order to ensurethe development of the enterprise and the renewal of itsequipment. A third share was to be used for paying percent-ages to the members of the administration and bonuses to theworkers.8

At the time, this financial autonomy and this striving for


profit possessed very special significance, for great “freedomof action” was left to the state’s industrial enterprises in thematter of their relations with the commercial circuits and theprices at which they sold their products.

During the first half of the 1920s the extension of khozras-chet resulted in the concentration of the tasks of managementand of the buying and selling of products in the hands of theleaders of the industrial trusts. Statistics for the summer of1923 show that there were then 478 trusts created by theVSNKh grouping 3,561 enterprises and employing one millionworkers (which meant 75 percent of all workers employed inthe state-owned industrial sector).

Under the federal constitution of the USSR there were All-Union trusts, Republican trusts, and local trusts, which weresubordinate, respectively, to the VSNKh, the Economic Coun-cil of the particular republic, and the local economic council.These were the organizations which appointed the directorsof the trusts.

At the head of each trust was a body of directors organized asa council. This council appointed the managers of the variousenterprises dependent upon it.

The organs which appointed the heads of the trusts or of theenterprises did not interfere in the way they were run, butwere responsible for supervising their accounts through anauditing commission made up of three members, one of whomrepresented the trade union of the workers employed by thetrust or enterprise.9

These enterprises and trusts carried out buying and sellingoperations on the basis of prices determined by contract, ex-cept in cases where prices were subject to regulation. The ruleof aiming to make a profit which had been laid down by thedecree of April 10, 1923, applied also to those very largeenterprises which came directly under the VSNKh.

In a number of statements from 1921 on Lenin explainedthat the introduction of khozraschet signified that the statesector had been “put on a commercial, capitalist basis.” Hestressed that this meant not merely that “it is absolutely essen-tial that all authority in the factories should be concentrated in


the hands of the management” (a principle already decided in1918, and which had been gradually put into force), but thateach of these managements “must have authority indepen-dently to fix and pay out wages . . . ; it must enjoy the utmostfreedom to manoeuvre, exercise strict control of the actualsuccesses achieved in increasing production, in making thefactory pay its way and in increasing profits, and carefullyselect the most talented and capable administrative personnel,etc.”10

(b) The immediate aims being pursuedwhen khozraschet was introduced

At the outset, the establishment of khozraschet aimed es-sentially at ensuring the reactivation of state-owned industryas quickly as possible. To this end it was necessary to allowwide freedom of initiative to the different enterprises, andtherefore to break up the ultracentralized system which hadprevailed under “war communism” which was no longeradapted to the diversified economic tasks that were now onthe agenda.

Under the existing political conditions (the “depro-letarianizing” of the working class, penetrated by very manypetty-bourgeois elements, the Party’s weak position in manyfactories, etc.), the Bolshevik Party considered that decen-tralized initiative must depend, first and foremost, on theresponsibility exercised by the heads of enterprises.

Conduct of the enterprises was then subjected to “controlby the rouble.” In principle, the enterprises were no longer tobe subsidized. They were to make profits or, at the very least,to balance their expenditure and their receipts. If they shouldfail to do this then, for the time being, the only thing for themto do was to close down.

Such strict rules corresponded to the situation at the begin-ning of the NEP. At that time the state’s financial resourceswere drawn mainly from the peasantry and from inflation ofthe currency. In order that the NEP might “function” theremust neither be any increase in the burden of taxes borne by


the peasants nor any continuance of inflation through thepayment of subsidies to enterprises that showed a loss. Finan-cial resources must serve, first and foremost, the restoration ofthe economy: they could not be devoted to keeping aliveenterprises that were incapable of surviving by their ownresources.

The closing down of some enterprises through the workingof “balanced management” also corresponded to another as-pect of the situation: at that time, the shortage of raw materialsand fuel was such that it was not materially possible for allenterprises to function. Therefore it seemed necessary to con-centrate the available material resources on those productionunits that would use them most economically and make itpossible to produce at the least cost.

The criterion of “profitability” thus decided whether enter-prises were kept alive or temporarily closed down. This crite-rion did not, of course, guarantee that the production unitswhich continued to function were necessarily those whichcould best produce what was socially most necessary. Onlythoroughgoing investigation could have revealed which en-terprises ought, from this standpoint, to be kept active. But thesocial and political conditions needed for such investigationsto be carried out without their conclusions being seriouslyaffected by the various private interests involved (includingthe divergent interests of the workers in different enterprisesor localities) were not present at that time. The recourse to thecriterion of profitability thus reflected, in the last analysis, acertain situation in the class struggle and a certain state ofclass consciousness.

Consequently, the requirements of the reproduction of cap-ital tended to impose themselves, under the specific formsthat these requirements assume when the different “fractions”of capital function separately. These forms, when they are notdealt with critically, from the standpoint of a class policy, tendto give priority to financial “profitability,” which may comeinto contradiction with the long-term requirements of ex-panded reproduction. At the beginning of the NEP this wasshown, in rapid reactivation of the enterprises producing con-


sumer goods, whereas the heavy industrial enterprises pro-ducing equipment experienced a grave crisis. The former-made big profits and so possessed the means of paying thehighest prices for the means of production they needed, whilethe latter suffered from great difficulties, and in many caseshad to cease production.

In 1921 and 1922 the VSNKh tended to accept this state ofaffairs as a “necessary” consequence of khozraschet.11

The conception of the decisiveness of profitability was up-held for a considerable stretch of the NEP period by thePeople’s Commissariat of Finance and by Gosbank. Bourgeoisfinancial experts were especially numerous in these organs.The theoretical weakness of some of the Party’s leaders wasparticularly marked where financial and monetary questionswere concerned. For some years Narkomfin and Gosbankwere unwilling to give more than very small subsidies toheavy industry, which experienced hard times. Similarly,these organs opposed the financing on credit of purchases bythe poor and middle peasants of the tools that they needed.

The attitude of Narkomfin, especially its opposition to thepoint of view defended by Lenin,12 was expressed, for exam-ple, at the Congress of Soviets in December 1922. It was thenthat the commissar of finance, Sokolnikov, declared that thecrisis being suffered at that time by a section of industrywould make it possible to “clean up” the state sector, and thatkhozraschet had the advantage that it made the state no longerdirectly responsible for the level of employment, while ena-bling “true prices” to be established, prices corresponding to“market conditions” and “costs.”13

Consequently, in the absence of a sufficiently clear concep-tion of the limits within which khozraschet could play apositive role, financial autonomy of the enterprises could re-sult in an economic development subjected to the conditionsof reproduction of the different “fractions” of social capital, akind of development that would give rise to economic crises.

While uncritical application of khozraschet could bringsuch consequences, it nevertheless remains true that the in-


troduction of financial autonomy was necessary. In general,during a large part of the transition period, this form of man-agement facilitates (provided that its limits are clearly under-stood) measuring, to a certain extent, the way that variousenterprises are functioning, and their aptitude to respect theprinciples of economy which must be observed if part of theproduct of social labor is not to be squandered. Furthermore,at the time when it was introduced, khozraschet was the onlymeans whereby costs of production could be quickly lowered,so as to create some of the conditions enabling industry tooffer its products to the peasants at prices that weresufficiently low and stable.

(c) The functioning of khozraschet at thebeginning of the NEP

During the first years of the NEP khozraschet did not al-ways bring about a reduction in selling prices, for this periodwas one of inflation, shortage of goods, and opportunity forstate enterprises to make agreements among themselves.

Being at that time relatively free to fix their selling prices,the various state enterprises, or groups of enterprises, tendedto make the biggest possible profits, appropriating the largestshare they could of the surplus value produced in the statesector and of the value produced in the sector of petty-commodity production (chiefly by the peasants). In that perioda number of trusts came together to form sales groupings (or“syndicates” for selling their goods, and in some cases formaking purchases, too), which were organized in the form ofjoint-stock companies.

The first of these “syndicates” was formed in the textileindustry on February 28, 1922. It was a company with a capitalof 20 million gold roubles (prewar roubles), corresponding to10,000 shares allotted among the trusts and autonomous en-terprises which had subscribed to it. The purpose of this “syn-dicate” was to coordinate the purchasing, selling, and stockpil-ing activities of its members, and also their financial activities,


especially in the sphere of credit. A general meeting of theshareholders was held every six months, and appointed a boardof directors and a chairman. This meeting could allocate quotasfor production and sales: the board was entrusted with theconduct of current business and fixing of prices. This “syndi-cate” also played a role in international trade, especially in theUnited States and Britain. The factories under its control em-ployed 535,000 workers in 1924–1925.14

Dozens of sales syndicates of this sort were formed at thattime, covering most industries. They soon united hundreds ofenterprises, employing altogether nearly 80 percent of theworkers in the state-owned industrial sector.

The creation of a “Council of Syndicates” to take the placeof the VSNKh was even contemplated at one stage, but wasrejected by the Bolshevik Party. If it had been realized, thisproject would have concentrated enormous economic (andtherefore, ultimately, political) power in the hands of theleaders of industry. However, though the original scheme wasdropped, the VSNKh agreed to the appointment by the salessyndicates of a Consultative Council to work with it.15

The evolution which has just been surveyed was a sig-nificant one. It showed the strength of the current which wasthen driving toward what was called a “dictatorship of indus-try.”16

The “monopolistic competition” which developed in thisway, within the state sector, had a negative influence on theworker-peasant alliance and on industrial production itself.

After the end of 1923 the Soviet government opposed, withincreasing success, these monopolistic practices. Havingended inflation, it obliged the state enterprises gradually toreduce their selling prices, in accordance with the originalaims of the introduction of khozraschet.

Nevertheless, when the period of reconstruction ended in1925, the demands of the restructuring of industry made itnecessary to transform the conditions under which khozras-chet was applied, so as to subordinate the activity of theenterprises to the tasks laid down by the economic plan.


II. Khozraschet and state planning

Development of state-owned industry on the basis of khoz-raschet alone would have resulted in its following a road likethat of a private capitalist industry placed in similar relationswith agriculture and the world market. There would havebeen priority development of the light industries, the most“profitable” ones, while the basic industries would have de-veloped much more slowly, or would even have regressed(their previous development, in the tsarist period, had indeedbeen sustained by state aid). From the standpoint of interna-tional relations, this type of development would have placedthe Soviet economy in a “semicolonial” situation: the USSRwould have exported mainly agricultural produce, raw mate-rials, and a few manufactured consumer goods, and importedequipment for industry and agriculture from the Westerncountries which could supply them more cheaply.

Toward the end of 1921 Lenin had criticized the supportersof such a “development,” which would emphasize “criteriaof profitability” to the exclusion of everything else. Leninsummed up some of these criticisms in the report he gave onNovember 13, 1922, to the Fourth Congress of the Comintern.In this report he stressed that the Soviet government ought notto take account merely of the profitability of enterprises. Heshowed that, if they acted on that principle, then heavy indus-try, the basis for the country’s further development, would bedoomed, under the conditions of that time, to suffer a very gravecrisis. He then presented the problem of simultaneous de-velopment of agriculture, light industry, and heavy industry,and said:

The salvation of Russia lies not only in a good harvest on thepeasant farms—that is not enough; and not only in the goodcondition of light industry, which provides the peasants withconsumer goods—this, too, is not enough; we also need heavyindustry. . . . Heavy industry needs state subsidies. If we arenot able to provide them, we are doomed as a civilised state, letalone as a socialist state.17


Here he expressed in a few words the conflict which wasdeveloping at that time between the use of khozraschet as ameans of current management, which Lenin supported, and aquite different conception, which wanted to subject the gen-eral development of the economy to “criteria of profitability,”a conception which “put profit in command.”

Lenin’s interventions set limits to some of the conse-quences of the latter conception, but it continued to be man-ifested during subsequent years. On the pretext of “poorprofitability” it tended to hinder, to some extent, the de-velopment of heavy industry and the equipment of the poorand middle peasants’ farms with new means of production, sothat these peasants were rendered more dependent upon thekulaks. The class content of this conception comes out clearlyin this consequence.

From the end of 1925, when existing industrial capacity hadbeen almost completely brought into use, the question arosein a particularly acute form: should the pace of development ofthe various industries be determined primarily by their re-spective rates of profitability, as these resulted from the work-ing of khozraschet, or should the state intervene with a planto ensure the priority development of certain branches ofindustry, regardless of their “profitability”? This questionwas, indeed, settled in favor of the plan, but uncertainty stillprevailed where some decisive questions were concerned:what principles should guide the priority development of thisor that industry, what proportion of the investment fundshould be allocated to this or that type of development, whatlimit should be assigned to the investment fund?

These questions possessed crucial political importance: thestrengthening or weakening of the worker-peasant alliance,the masses’ standard of living, and the conditions of produc-tion in the factories depended on the way that they wereanswered. But these questions were not presented in an all-sided way. The practical “answers” given to them werelargely determined by a rather schematic notion of the “re-quirements” of industrialization, of the role of large-scale in-dustry and heavy industry, and also by the growing influence


wielded by the heads of the big enterprises and by the indus-trial specialists of the VSNKh. This resulted in the adoption ofeconomic plans the scope and content of which were less andless compatible with the maintenance of the NEP, while, as aconsequence of putting these plans into effect, the functioningof khozraschet underwent increasingly extensive changes.

These changes acquired decisive importance from 1928–1929 on. They tended to subordinate the relations betweenthe different enterprises no longer directly to the criteria ofprofitability resulting from the operation of khozraschet(which did not disappear, but was merely put in a “domi-nated” situation), but to the demands of the economic plan.

The very conception of the plan was changed. Until then,the annual plan, the only one that was directly operational,had consisted in the “control figures” which were supposed toreflect, in the main, the “spontaneous tendencies” of theeconomy, and therefore helped mainly to reproduce existingsocial relations, and which, moreover, had practically no com-pulsory aspect.

After 1926 the annual plan (and then, later, the Five-YearPlan) included obligatory targets determined on the basis ofpolitical decisions aimed at imposing a certain type of indus-trial development. It was no longer merely a matter of trying to“harmonize” certain “tendencies” (corresponding to an ex-trapolation of past developments, or to the forecasts made bythe heads of the trusts), but of defining and imposing targets ofa “voluntarist” character which might be very remote fromthose toward which the proposals of the heads of enterpriseswould have led industry.

The idea of a plan that was mainly a “harmonization” of thespontaneous tendencies of the economy did not merely corre-spond to the practice of the first annual “control figures,” italso engendered a theoretical conception, called the “ge-neticist” conception, which was defended by some Sovieteconomists, such as V. Bazarov and V. Groman. The contraryconception, that of a plan which imposed targets which hadbeen determined by human will, was called the “teleological”conception. It was this second conception, the only one com-


patible with aims of economic and social change, that hadtriumphed. Its most resolute supporters were the economistsG. Feldman and S. Strumilin. The political leader who de-fended it most firmly was Kuibyshev, who said: “We canconstruct plans based not only on foreseeing what will happenbut also on a definite will to achieve specific tasks and pur-poses.”18

The victory of the “teleological” conception of the plan didnot mean that the plans drawn up were “the expression of theplanners’ subjectivity.” In fact, the plans adopted by the polit-ical authorities were the product of a complex social process:they were the effect of class relations and class struggles, andwere subjected to a series of social constraints both duringtheir preparation and during their implementation.

The victory of the “teleological” conception of the plan didnot mean, either, that the actual development of the economyand of industry “submitted itself” strictly to the “demands” ofthe plan. The history of the Soviet plans shows that this wasfar from being the case. Nevertheless, this victory gave a quitedifferent style to industrial development, and led to thechanges in the working of khozraschet which were observablemainly at three levels:

1. The investments realized in the various branches of in-dustry and the various state-owned enterprises were less andless determined by the profits that were obtained or whichcould be expected in these branches or enterprises: they de-pended increasingly on the priorities laid down by the plan.In practice, a growing proportion of these investments werederived from budgetary grants which became integrated in thepermanent funds of the enterprises to which they were given;a diminishing proportion were derived from repayable bankloans.19 This meant a partial transformation of khozraschet.

2. The imperative character of the plan implied that pro-duction by each enterprise and each trust was less and lessdetermined by the customers’ orders received, with the “mostprofitable” of these being preferred: it was now determinedby administrative instructions emanating from higher author-


ity. In Soviet practice in the last years of the NEP, thisheightened role played by the superior administrative au-thorities in the orienting of production was exercised in sev-eral ways:

(a) First, in the working out of the production program ofeach trust, which was increasingly subject to decisions handeddown from above. In 1925-1926 the VSNKh defined thus theprocedure for working out the industrial plan:

Inasmuch as the work of every trust, and even more of a wholeindustry, will be almost entirely determined by the state, whichwill provide it with a specific amount of supplementary re-sources, the industrial plan can no longer be constructed byadding up the proposals of the trusts. The proposals of the trustsare moving into the background: into the foreground move theproposals and intentions of the state, which is becoming the realmaster of its industry. Therefore, it is only the state economicagencies which can construct the industrial plan: the industrialplan must be constructed not from below but from above.20

This procedure for drawing up the plan reduced to very littlethe contribution made by proposals coming from the factoriesthemselves.

(b) In the course of carrying out their production plan, theenterprises had less and less to consider the customers’ orderswhich they might receive. In fact, toward the end of the NEP,the sales syndicates, which centralized the commercial opera-tions of the industrial enterprises, vanished from the scene.Their functions were usually integrated in the variousPeople’s Commissariats charged with distributing the prod-ucts of state enterprises in conformity with the plan.

The plan of each enterprise was subject, moreover, to anumber of variations in the course of the year, owing to fre-quent reestimations of the need for goods and of the pos-sibilities of their production by industry. The leading organsof the economy required, however, that the enterprises pro-vide the production laid down in the last instructionsreceived—and these instructions were often sent without con-sulting the enterprises themselves. From this resulted fre-


quent and important discordances between the targets as-signed to enterprises and their actual production capacity.21

3. The imperative character of the plan and the dual natureof its targets (in terms of use value and of exchange value) ledto enterprises being more and more deprived of the possibilityof fixing their prices for buying and selling for themselves.Prices were thus “planned.” One of the aims pursued by thisplanning was to ensure a sufficient degree of coincidencebetween the forecasts of physical flows and those of financialflows. Actually, the coincidence was not very well ensured, inparticular because the forecasts regarding productivity oflabor, wages, and costs of production were very imperfectlyrealized. The imbalances between supply and demand result-ing from this state of affairs made all the more necessary theregulation of prices, so that state enterprises might be pre-vented from getting around the financial discipline of thepromfinplan by taking advantage of goods shortages to raisetheir selling prices, which would have threatened to bringabout a rush of price increases.

Altogether, toward the end of the NEP period, productionby each enterprise was less and less determined by the com-modity and monetary conditions governing its integration, viakhozraschet, in the overall process of reproduction. Hence-forth, it depended more and more upon the tasks and meansassigned by the plan. However, the tasks allocated to enter-prises and the means granted them by the plan depended alsoon the results that they obtained, both on the plane of physicalquantities produced and on that of their “financial perfor-mance” (the actual evolution of their “profitability,” of theircosts of production, and so on).

The contradictions between the frequently unrealistic pro-visions of the plan and the actual results obtained affected theoverall process of social reproduction. The development ofthese contradictions contributed largely to the creation of cer-tain specific features of the final crisis of the NEP, in particularthe increase in inflation and the shortage of numerous con-sumer goods produced by industry. We must therefore lookinto the nature of the social relations that underlay the de-


velopment of these contradictions. This brings us to consider-ation of the significance of the categories of price, wages, andprofit, and their role in the class struggles.

Notes

1. On these points see volume I of the present work, especially pp.333 ff. and 404 ff.

2. In the following pages we are mainly concerned with industrialenterprises, but khozraschet applied also to the other stateowned enterprises, in agriculture, trade, banking, etc.

3. Sobranie uzakonenii, no. 59 (1921), art. 403, and no. 63, art. 462.4. E. Pollock, Die Planwirtschaftlichen, pp. 184-227, especially pp.

211-212; also M. Dobb, Soviet Economic Development, p. 126,and E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 2, pp. 302 ff.

5. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 2, p. 304.6. See above, p. 63.7. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 2, p. 308 (my emphasis—C

B.). In July 1923 the VSNKh repeated that the making of a profitmust be the principle guiding the work of the Soviet trusts (Carr,The Interregnum, p. 9).

8. See the extracts from the CLD decree of April 10,1923, quoted inI. Lapidus and K. Ostrovityanov, Outline, p. 182.

9. Dobb, Soviet Economic Development, pp. 135–137.10. Lenin, CW, vol. 33, p. 189 (decision of the CC on the tasks of the

trade unions, January 12, 1922); vol. 42, p. 476.11. See volume I of the present work, pp. 152 ff.12. See above, p. 277.13. X-y Vserossiisky Syezd Sovyetov (1923), pp. 102–111.14. Y. S. Rozenfeld, Promyshlennaya Politika SSSR, p. 230, The

All-Union Textile Syndicate, pp. 4-15, quoted in Dobb, SovietEconomic Development, p. 160, n. 1.

15. Dobb, Soviet Economic Development, pp. 160–161.16. The expression “dictatorship of industry” was used in The New

Course (pp. 72–73), Trotsky’s pamphlet in which he tried tojustify such a dictatorship. He sought to moderate the implica-tions of this expression and to show that a “dictatorship of indus-try” was not in contradiction with the worker-peasant alliance, on


the grounds that, ultimately, industry would serve the needs ofthe peasantry.

17. Lenin, CW, vol. 33, p. 426.18. II-ya Sessiya Ts IK SSSR 4 soyuza (1927?), p. 246, quoted in Carr

and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 792. On the discussionbetween supporters of the “geneticist” and “teleological” con-ceptions, see ibid., pp. 790 ff.; also A. Erlich, The Soviet Indus-trialization Debate; N. Spulber, Soviet Strategy for EconomicGrowth, and The Soviet Economy, especially pp 218 ff.

19. At the end of 1928 it appears that industrial investment was stillbeing financed mainly by repayable bank loans (seeEkonomicheskoye Obozreniye, no. 12 [1928], p. 38). In 1929 thisceased to be so. A decree of May 23, 1930 decided that invest-ments made from the unified budget would be treated as non-repayable grants (Sobranie Zakonov, no. 28 [1930], art. 316). Onthese points, see J. M. Collette, Politique des investissements etcalcul économique, pp. 51–65.

20. Perspektivy Promyshlennosti na 1925–1926 operatsionny god(1925) quoted in Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, p. 2, p.825.

21. The targets of the plan were formulated both in terms of physicalquantities and “in value terms,” the whole constituting an “i-dustrial and financial plan” (promfinplan). See Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta, April 14–15, 1928, and Carr and Davies,Foundations, vol. I, p. 2, pp. 825 ff.

285

5. The categories of price, wages, and profit and their class significance

The problems considered in this chapter lie at the heart ofour analysis of the transition to socialism. An attempt to dealwith them here in an all-sided way would divert us too farfrom the principal object of our inquiry, namely, the character-istics of the social process which led to the brusque aban-donment of the NEP and the changeover to the type of col-lectivization and industrialization that the USSR actuallyexperienced. It is therefore mainly in order to serve the needsof this inquiry that I shall discuss here the social nature of thecategories of price, wages, and profit in the Soviet social forma-tion, and more especially in state-owned industry, during thelast years of the NEP period.

The analyses that follow are aimed at revealing the roleplayed by these economic categories—actually by these socialrelations—in a concrete historical process. This demonstra-tion requires that account be taken not only of the place actu-ally occupied by prices, wages, and profits but also of theideological conception of the role played by these categories,for this had a far-reaching influence on the way the concretehistorical process developed, especially because it embodieda contradiction between reality and the awareness of thatreality which it was supposed to constitute.

I. The ideological conception of the role ofthe categories of price, wages, and profit

A study of the resolutions adopted by the leading bodies ofthe Bolshevik Party enables us to distinguish various notions


of the role of the categories of price, wages, and profit, andvarious analyses of the nature of the social relations whichmanifested themselves through these categories. This studyalso enables us to observe that when the central planningorgans began their activity (that is, during the last years of theNEP), the dominant conception tended increasingly to treatthese categories as “empty forms,” seeing them not as theexpression of social relations but as, in the main, mere “book-keeping magnitudes.”

The Outline of Political Economy by Lapidus and Os-trovityanov offers one of the most systematic expositions ofthis type of conception, and so I shall turn to it in order toextract some significant formulations.

(a) The conception of price and wages as“integument,” with mainly“quantitative determination”

Where the role of value from and price form is concerned,the Outline starts from the fact that, in relations betweenstate-owned enterprises, the circulation of goods takes placein the form of purchases and sales (as was aimed at by theintroduction of khozraschet) which are effected at determinedprices. The Outline agrees that these operations of buying andselling are market operations, but at the same time it deniesthat they express (or conceal) the same social relations asvalue. The authors of the Outline recall that the enterprisesbetween which the goods circulate are “different enterprisesof one and the same state, and not two independent owners;for them the market is by no means the sole form of connexion,and therefore it is not possible to speak of value here.” Fromthis follows the conclusion that what obtains is merely theoutward form of value, its “integument,” concerning which itis said, at the same time, that “despite the absence of value inits content, the superficial form, the ‘integument’ of value stillhas a certain real significance. . . .”1

As a whole, this exposition shows obvious embarrassment.In substance, it presents price as an “empty form” (the authors


write of an “integument”), which in plain words means that itis not the form of manifestation of social relations. What issaid to matter above all is “the quantitative determination ofthe price,” 2 and they begin by declaring that that determina-tion is “to a certain extent . . . regulated by the state planningorganizations,” 3 only to admit later on that there enters intothe fixing of this price a whole series of factors and forces,market forces, with which the state institutions have toreckon.4 However, the reservations thus introduced concernonly the quantitative determination of the price, leaving un-changed the conception that this price is an “integument” or“empty form.”

What the Outline says about price it says likewise aboutwages, and here again by referring to the notion of state own-ership, the state in question being that of the working class. “Ifwe use such terms as wage-labour in connexion with Sovietindustry, they characterise only the superficial forms, behindwhich is concealed a completely new, a socialist relation-ship.” 5

Here we see repeated the conception that there is a form ofdistribution (in this case, wages) which is a mere “externalform,” similar to the form assumed by capitalist relations, buthaving a different, even contradictory “content.” This inevita-bly raises a fundamental question: why do the new socialrelations which are said to exist manifest themselves in thesame form as their opposite? Faced with this contradiction, allthat the authors of the Outline can say is that “there is acontradiction between form and content under capitalism also,and that such contradiction existed during the transition fromfeudalism to capitalism.” 6

However, this observation tells us nothing about the sig-nificance of such a contradiction, especially as regards thedegree to which the production relations are actuallychanged: the reality of such a change is simply identified bythe Outline with the existence of state ownership and thedictatorship of the proletariat. The problem of the limits of thischange (at the level of immediate production relations andrelations of reproduction) is not raised. Yet it is only the exis-


tence of these limits that enables us to understand that, if thewages form is present, this is because the actual productionrelations are a combination of the former relations with newones, and it is the role still being played by the formercapitalist relations which accounts for the existence of thewages: form.7

In any case, the formulations quoted above from the Outlinelead its authors to affirm that “we cannot speak of Sovietindustry either in terms of exploitation or in terms of surplusvalue.” 8

As regards the absence of surplus value the argument of-fered is extremely brief, merely referring to the statementsmade earlier about value, price, and wages being just mattersof “outward form.” It leads, moreover, to a conclusion thatcontradicts a resolution of the Bolshevik Party. The TwelfthParty Congress (April 17–25, 1923) declared, in a resolutionthat was passed unanimously, that “the question of surplusvalue in state-owned industry is a question on which dependsthe fate of the Soviet power, that is, of the proletariat.” 9

In 1928 this resolution seems to have been forgotten, so thatthe production of surplus value was presented as resulting, inall circumstances, from a process of exploitation, which is notnecessarily: so.10

(b) Remarks on this conception

The difficulties encountered by the authors of the Outlinewere due to the fact that, for them, state ownership and plan-ning signified the “disappearance” of commodity andcapitalist relations. As we have seen, these relations were onlyvery partially altered in the immediate production process(the existence of one-person management and khozraschetensured the reproduction of commodity and capitalist rela-tions, as Lenin had shown). Furthermore, planning, in theform it then took, did not make possible the transformation ofthe production process as a whole into a really unified proc-ess, because it was determined without participation by themasses and imposed upon them.


Actually, at the end of the NEP the social reproductionprocess was still, fundamentally, made up of different produc-tion processes which were both interdependent (in that theywere particular “moments” in the social reproduction process)and, at the same time, isolated and separated (in that theywere not dominated collectively by the workers, associated onthe scale of society).

As long as the social production process has this structure,even the objects produced in the state sector are still “prod-ucts of the labour of private individuals who work indepen-dently of each other,” to use Marx’s expression when describ-ing the conditions under which “objects of utility becomecommodities.”11 It is precisely the existence of these condi-tions that accounts for the presence of the value and priceforms. These are therefore not at all mere “integuments,” butrather the manifestation of production relations about whichthe Outline contents itself with denying that they are stillreproducing themselves.

Economic planning as it was practiced in the NEP period—that is, planning from above—does not fundamentally alter theexteriority of the different branches of labor in relation to eachother, or the conditions under which the immediate producersparticipate in them.

True, the economic plan is the form under which it is possi-ble for relations of cooperation to develop among the produc-ers on the scale of society, for it facilitates bringing into apriori relation with each other the various production pro-cesses, which may thus cease to be “isolated.” But not everyeconomic plan leads inevitably to real coordination and con-trol of the various production processes. Economic planningmay thus be more effective or less—it may even be illusory.The effectiveness of planning depends on the development ofthe socialist elements in the economic basis and superstruc-ture, the social conditions of production and reproduction, andthe political and ideological conditions under which theeconomic plan is worked out and put into operation. Evenunder the dictatorship of the proletariat an economic planwhich is essentially drawn up by experts, and subject, above


all, to the demands of a process of valorization, cannot besocialist in content. Socialist content is determined by theplace that the producers themselves occupy in the process ofcompiling and executing the plan and by the way in which theimmediate producers are integrated in the production process;it depends on the way that the producers recognize theirintegration in the production process as a directly social activ-ity, and not as a “private” activity destined merely to securethem a “personal income.”

An economic plan may thus possess, in different degrees, acapitalist or a socialist character. The actual character of a planmay change, and this changing is part of the battlefield be-tween the two roads, socialist and capitalist. The triumph ofthe socialist road implies the elimination of commodity andcapitalist relations. It presumes a change, resulting from aclass struggle that develops over a long historical period, inthe objective and subjective conditions of production.12

In the NEP period this change had hardly begun, and theeconomic plans were only marginally socialist in character.They could be called “socialist” plans only in the sensethat the term “implies the determination of the Soviet power toachieve the transition to socialism.”13

We may recall the remark made by Marx regarding thecollective labourer” under conditions of capitalist produc-tion, in which collective labor does not find its principle ofunity in itself, this unity being imposed from without upon theworkers, who combine their efforts under the pressure of awill which is not their own.14

Planning develops a socialist character only in so far as itsprinciple of unity is the collective will of the workers, with theessentials of the plan not being worked out independently ofthem. This implies that the plan is the outcome of mass activ-ity; and this it can become only through protracted ideologicalstruggle, thanks to which labor becomes directly social, thisalso being the condition under which the wage form willdisappear.

In the Grundrisse Marx shows that the existence of wages,of the value form on the plane of distribution, proves “that


production is not directly social, is not ‘the offspring of associ-ation,’ which distributes labour internally. Individuals aresubsumed under social production; social production existsoutside them, as their fate; but social production is not sub-sumed under individuals, manageable by them as their com-mon wealth.”15

The value form and the wage relation which develops fromit thus imply that social labor is expended as particular labor,that it is not general labor, and general labor time still cannotexist except in the form of a universal object—namely, money,which ensures the socialization of particular labors.16

The existence of the forms “value,” “money,” and “wages”thus implies that, despite state ownership of the means ofproduction, the workers remain socially separated from theirmeans of production, that they can set these in motion onlyunder constraints which are external to themselves. Underthese conditions, productive activity does not have a directlysocial character, but retains the character of an activity that is atonce “individual” and social.

Only disappearance of the “private,” individual, and par-ticular character of labor 17 and of the “independence” of thevarious branches of labor (objectively interdependent), makesit possible to destroy the conditions for the existence of com-modity and capitalist relations. This disappearance can beensured only through development on the social scale of rela-tions of cooperation between the producers.

The ideological and political struggle for this cooperation(which is the condition for a change in the immediate produc-tion process and in the reproduction process) can alone ensurethe transformation of state ownership into collective appro-priation of the means of production. In so far as this struggleis not carried on, or has resulted only in partial changes, stateownership of the means of production functions still as “col-lective capital,”18 reproducing in a changed form the laws ofthe capitalist mode of production: this form may be that ofstate capitalism under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In this case, as in that of the workers’ cooperatives, we see,indeed, a partial break with the capitalist mode of production,


but a break that needs to be taken further if the effects of thecapitalist relations which continue to be reproduced are to becompletely eliminated. In connection with the “co-operativefactories of the labourers themselves,” Marx noted that they“naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere intheir actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailingsystem. But the antithesis between capital and labour is over-come within them, if at first only by making the associatedlabourers into their own capitalist, i.e., by enabling them touse the means of production for the employment of their ownlabour.”19

In the case of the workers in state-owned factories we haveproduction which is production of value and surplus value,which subordinates the agents of this production to specificdemands (distinct from the demands of production of mereuse-values) and also confers a particular function upon themanagers of the enterprises, who may be at one and the sametime agents of the reproduction of the “collective capital” andproletarian revolutionaries helping to destroy the existing so-cial relations and bring new ones to birth.

By failing to present the problem in these terms, the Outlineof Political Economy by Lapidus and Ostrovityanov rendersincomprehensible the existence of the forms “value,”“money,” “price,” and “wages” in Soviet society. It cannotpoint to any road leading to the disappearance of these formsand the development of socialist relations—which it regardsas already fully existent. Finally, it prevents the reader fromunderstanding the significance of the profit made by the stateenterprises, the quantitative aspect of which is alone consid-ered.

(c) The ideological conception of thesignificance of the profit made by stateenterprises toward the end of the NEP

Proceeding as it does from the premises mentioned, theOutline necessarily arrives at the assertion that the profit made


by state enterprises is not profit, and it is therefore unable toallow it any “significance” other than as a bookkeeping de-vice: “Inasmuch as there can be no thought of surplus value inthe socialised state enterprises, there cannot be any thought ofprofit either. . . . That is why, in speaking of the ‘profit’ ofSoviet state enterprises we should continually keep in viewthe fact that the word is used by us conventionally, while in itsessence, in its content, it has nothing in common withcapitalist profit.” 20

Such schematic formulations conceal the real role that profit(which is always in the form of definite social relations) con-tinues to play in the Soviet economy. In particular, theseformulations prevent either raising the problem of statecapitalism in the NEP period, or understanding the obstaclesset in the path to full use of the powers of labor by thedemands of the valorization of capital, or dealing correctlywith the contradictions between these demands and those of aproletarian policy.

II. The wages and profit forms and theevolution of employment andunemployment toward the end of theNEP

The evolution of industrial employment and unemploymenttoward the end of the NEP shows clearly that it was subject tothe demands of the valorization of capital. The reproductionof the wages and profit forms, and the uncritical treatment ofthese forms, imposed capitalist limits upon the growth in thelabor force that could have been employed in industry. Theselimits were those of the profitability of invested capital—taking into account, of course, the level of wages. We needhere to take a general view of the fluctuations in employmentand unemployment.


(a) A general view of the fluctuations inemployment and unemployment

The first years of the NEP were marked by a sharp declinein the numbers employed in industry and a sudden increase inunemployment. The initial decline in the numbers employedin state enterprises was due to the application of the principleof financial autonomy: the enterprises could keep in employ-ment only the number of wage earners corresponding to themoney they made which they could spend on wage payments;they were no longer in receipt of subsidies from the state, andvery soon, except for profitable operations, they were to bedeprived of credit. The aim pursued was to put an end toinflation and secure a reduction in industrial costs of produc-tion. At that time, indeed, costs of production were partly“swollen” by payments of wages which did not correspond toany productive activity, because the enterprises lacked theraw materials and power needed if they were to operate at fullcapacity.

The statistics do not enable us to determine the exactextent to which employment declined, but it certainly affected hun-dreds of thousands of workers. The railways alone saw thenumber of wage earners on their payroll fall from 1,240,000 to720,000. In the spinning mills concentration of production inthe best-equipped enterprises made it possible to halve thenumber of workers employed per thousand spindles,21 andthereby to make a serious cut in the cost of production. How-ever, in 1923 employment began to recover, thanks to a bettersupply of raw materials.22

After 1924 industrial employment increased almost stead-ily.23 What calls for attention, however, is that unemploymentalso increased, steadily and to a considerable extent: the ex-pansion in employment, though rapid, did not suffice to ab-sorb the labor power in search of wage-paid jobs.

Estimates of the number of unemployed are highly approx-imate. According to the labor exchange figures, 1,340,000 un-employed persons were registered on July 1, 1924, at 70 ex-changes.24 In 1924–1925 the registers kept by the labor ex-


changes were “purged” of a large number of persons—namely, those who had not already been wage earners (whichmeant mostly young people), those who had been unem-ployed for three years, and so on. As a result of this “purge”the number of registered unemployed was brought down to848,000. Even though subjected to operations of this sort fromtime to time, the labor exchange statistics neverthelessshowed a steady increase in unemployment. In 1925–1926there were, officially, more than one million unemployed; in1927–1928 nearly 1.3 million; and on April 1, 1929, 1.7 mil-lion.25

Actually, these statistics greatly underestimate the numbersunemployed. For example, on January 1, 1927, the labor ex-changes reckoned that there were only 867,000 trade unionistsout of work—but, on the same date, the trade unions them-selves recorded 1,667,000 members unemployed, or morethan double that figure.26

The amount of unemployment and its tendency to get worseconstituted a symptom of deep-lying economic contradictions,of a crisis situation that was more and more acute. In 1926–1927 the Party leaders acknowledged that unemployment wasmore than a mere passing phenomenon, and that it presented agrave problem. At the beginning of 1927 Kirov went so far as tospeak of it as “an enormous ulcer in our economic or-ganism.”27

(b) The way the Bolshevik Party analyzedthe causes of unemployment

However, the Bolshevik Party did not undertake an analysisof social relations (and of the form in which they manifestedthemselves) such as could account for the developing con-tradiction between the increase in the number of unemployedand the increase in unsatisfied demand (the growth of “short-ages”). The way the Bolshevik Party tried, in 1927, to explainthe increase in unemployment, and the political measureswhich followed from this type of explanation, deserve ourattention. Analysis of the social relations in industry and of the


way these relations were expressed was practically nowhereto be found in the explanations prevalent at that time.

These explanations revolved around two notions. Referencewas made, on the one hand, to the “quantitative inadequacy”of the material factors of production, and, on the other, to theexistence of “rural overpopulation” which was seen as theprincipal “source” of unemployment, owing to the size ofthe flood of workers migrating from the country districts intothe towns.28 Some examples will enable us to see how thesetwo notions “functioned,” and how their “functioning” wasrelated to the lack of a genuine analysis of the social relationsexisting in industry.

Let us take as an example the speech made at the FourthCongress of Soviets (April 1927) by Schlichter, commissar ofagriculture in the Ukrainian Republic. Using the notion of“rural overpopulation,” he estimated that in the RSFSR 10percent of the rural population was “surplus,” the correspond-ing figures for Byelorussia and the Ukraine being 16 and 18percent.29 In that period the figure of between 10 and 15million for the “surplus” rural population was generally ac-cepted.30

What the significance of such figures was is obviously farfrom clear.31 In any case, the notion of “rural overpopulation,”used in this way, easily brought up the idea of “shortage ofland,” which led to the recommending of a policy of migra-tion, of “colonisation” of new lands.32

The second “material factor” invoked to “explain” unem-ployment was related to the idea that there were not enoughinstruments of labor available to employ all those who werelooking for work, and from this followed the affirmation thatunemployment was due to the country’s “poverty” and theinadequacy of investment.

Thus, in 1927 the economist Strumilin considered that thefigures for investment in industry that were then included inthe draft of the Five-Year Plan would not suffice to banishunemployment completely,33 for the total amount of this in-vestment, divided by the investment “necessary” to “create”one industrial job, showed that an increase of only about400,000 jobs in industry could be expected.


At the Sixth Congress of the Comintern the economist Vargaexpounded the same view: “In the Soviet Union unemploy-ment exists only because the economy is poor. If we couldprovide all the unemployed with means of production therewould never need to be unemployment in the Soviet Union.” 34

This way of arguing is, of course, surprising when it comesfrom “Marxists.” It provokes the question why it was that, forcenturies, countries even “poorer” than the Soviet Union of1927 did not know unemployment, and what “economic law”dictates that a certain amount of investment is needed as thecondition for “creating” a job.35

However, the majority in the CC, no less than the opposi-tion, accepted this way of arguing. In varying forms we see itin operation in several of Stalin’s pronouncements. Thus, atthe Fourteenth Party Congress (December 1925), he said thatthe future pace of industrial development would have to beslowed down owing to “a considerable shortage of capital.” 36

The link thus proclaimed between the pace of industrializa-tion and that of accumulation recurs frequently, for example in a speech made by Stalin in March 1927.37 Finally, as weshall see in more detail later, this conception led, in 1928, tothe “justifying” of the theory that a “tribute” must be leviedfrom the peasantry to finance industrial development.38

The “explanation” of unemployment by “shortage” of landand inadequate accumulation (which slowed down the pace ofindustrialization) was dominant but not exclusive in the 1920s.The notion that there was a “shortage” of land was especiallydisputed, most often by pointing to the opportunities for em-ployment and production which could be opened up by moreintensive cultivation (changing the system of rotation of cropsand bringing under the plough land lying at a distance fromthe village). Those agronomists who mentioned these pos-sibilities, however, usually found themselves up against theargument that the “resources” needed to realize thesechanges were not available.

In face of the rise in unemployment, the practical measuresdecided on by the Party and the government were very di-verse, but they were often intended to deal with the overt


expressions of the phenomenon rather than to attack its socialroots.

(c) The measures taken by the BolshevikParty in face of the rise inunemployment during the final years ofthe NEP

The first of these measures bore a mainly administrativecharacter. It was aimed at discouraging peasants from comingto the towns in too large numbers, to seek employment. Thus,the restrictions imposed on the registering of unemployedpersons at the labor exchanges39 aimed not merely at reducingthe number of registered unemployed but also at diverting theintentions of those peasants who were thinking of migrating tothe towns. It was supposed that, on leaving the village, if theyfound it impossible or very difficult to register at a laborexchange, perhaps they would hesitate to make the move.Accordingly, a decree of June 29, 1927, sought to regulate thearrival in the towns of workers of rural origin who werelooking for seasonal work. By this means the authoritiessought to make better appreciated in the rural areas the narrowlimits within which extra labor power could be absorbed bythe towns.40

This type of measure proved not very effective. The peas-ants who were leaving the countryside either had no work atall there or else earned extremely little,41 so that they pre-ferred, in any case, to try their luck in town—even if theirconditions of existence there should turn out to be wretched,when they failed to find either a job or a place to live.

On several occasions the authorities tried to send back thepeasants who came to the big towns, looking for work, as soonas they arrived at the railway station.42 This “method” wasparticularly unsuccessful, and gave rise to more or less violentclashes. It was used only in exceptional circumstances, since itwas in contradiction with the seasonal requirements of laborof certain industries, especially building.

The trade unions, too, tried to discourage the drift into thetowns of peasants in search of work, by not accepting into


membership anyone who had not already worked for wages43

and by striving to reserve priority in employment for theirmembers.44

Around this policy a serious struggle was waged, for it wasopposed by the managers of enterprises who favored “free-dom to hire.” In January 1925 they obtained the formal re-scinding of the article in the Labor Code which obliged themto hire workers exclusively through the labor exchanges45—an article which had, moreover, been only very partially re-spected. Thereafter, the hiring of workers took place more andmore frequently “at the factory gate,” and this encouragedmany peasants to come to town. Some managers even sent“recruiters” into the countryside: they preferred, wheneverthey could, to employ peasants, who “are less demanding andhave more physical endurance.” In their striving to increasethe profitability of “their” enterprises, certain managers evendismissed some of their workers so as to recruit fresh onescoming straight from the villages.46 This helped to increaseunemployment in the towns and worked against the effortsbeing made to reduce rural emigration.

Finally, in 1928, the obligation to engage workers onlythrough the labor exchanges was reintroduced, at least inprinciple. The increased role thus given to these institutionswas connected with the new situation resulting from the pro-jects for industrialization. This situation made it necessary toorganize both “struggle against unemployment” and “regula-tion of the labour-market.” A decree of September 26, 1928,modified the statute of Narkomtrud in accordance with thesetasks47 and strengthened the role of the labor exchanges.

The need to regulate the “labor market” resulted from thefact that the massive unemployment of unskilled workersexisted, especially after 1928, alongside partial “shortages” incertain skilled trades. Consequently, the State’s economic or-ganizations sought to take administrative measures whichwould enable them to assign certain workers to the activitiesand localities where there was considered to be a priorityneed for their employment.

The same concern with priority assignment to particular


jobs led to the adoption of the decree of March 26, 1928. Thisdecree provided that persons detained in prison camps couldbe assigned to work on building sites. Such measures werelater on to be adopted on a very large scale.48

For a time the carrying out of a policy of public works alsoplayed a part in the “struggle against unemployment.” Theform assumed by this policy was not specially socialist. It wasa question of giving employment to unskilled workers bydevoting part of the state’s financial resources to the creationof some large-scale building sites. When the industrializationprocess got under way, the policy of public works wascriticized and abandoned, on the grounds that it tied up toomuch “capital.”49

For several years, the idea that unemployment was due to“land shortage” stimulated also a policy of bringing “new”lands under cultivation, or bringing back under the ploughlands which had gone out of cultivation. This policy was par-ticularly favored by the People’s Commissariat of Agricultureand the agrarian economists. Its advocates stressed the factthat the cultivated area had not increased at the same rate asthat of the increase in the rural population.50 This had hap-pened mainly because many of the small- and medium-sizedpeasant farms lacked the means needed for more completecultivation of all the land they possessed: it was basically aproblem of the distribution and use of instruments of labor.

Faced with this situation, two political lines emerged. Oneaimed at helping the peasants to organize themselves (in par-ticular, to form mutual-aid committees51 and cooperatives forcultivation and production) and to acquire means of produc-tion that would enable them to extend the cultivated areas,especially those that were remote from the villages. This lineaimed at solving the problems at village level, relying firstand foremost on the peasants’ own resources. We know thatthis line had only very limited results.52

The other line was more “ambitious.” It aimed at mobiliz-ing the resources possessed by the state machine for undertak-ing “colonisation” of “virgin lands.” This line was put intopractice more or less systematically from 1925 on. Thus, adecree issued on September 6, 1926, by the government of the


RSFSR opened the Autonomous Republic of Karelia to work-ers who would go there to take up permanent residence.53

The Fifteenth Conference, and then the Fifteenth Congressof the Party (1927) declared for the extension of measures likethis to Siberia and the far east.54

In 1928 funds were made available for settling migrants inTurkestan, Kamchatka, Sakhalin, Bashkiria, and Buryat-Mongolia.55

A stream of migration was brought into being by these mea-sures. It involved some 700,000 persons. This was a poorresult when compared with the scale of the unemploymentproblem; but the migration thus organized was aimed not onlyat “solving” that problem—it also served the purpose of set-tling in Asia a population of European origin.56

In fact, the Bolshevik Party considered that the problem ofunemployment could not really be solved except by indus-trializing the country. From its point of view, the variousmeasures taken in other directions, even when economically“useful” (such as the extension of the cultivated areas) couldbe no more than temporary palliatives.

As we know, the Fifteenth Party Congress (December 1927)and, especially, the Sixteenth Party Conference (April 1929)emphasized more and more the industrialization of the coun-try; so that the question of unemployment could be approachedin a new way. We shall see later what political struggles werefought on this subject within the Party. First of all we need toexamine how the problem of unemployment as it arose duringthe NEP was rooted in the very nature of the reproductionprocess of that period.

III. Unemployment and the contradictorycharacter of the reproduction processunder the NEP

On the theoretical plane, the question of unemploymentpresents itself basically in these terms: was unemploymentdue to the reproduction of capitalist and commodity relations,


inside the state sector as well as outside it? Was it not thereproduction of these relations, under the conditions thenprevailing, that made impossible the employment of a largernumber of workers, this increased employment being sub-jected to constraints of valorization (the need to obtainthrough increased employment an exchange value larger thanwould have to be expended in order to give work to theunemployed) which could not then be satisfied?

In other words, did the unemployment situation not signifythat, despite the existence of socialist social relations, theserelations were not sufficiently developed for the production ofadditional use values (obtainable through putting the unem-ployed to work) to take precedence over the use of the meansof production, for preference, in a way that would ensure theirself-valorization, the production of surplus value? Or, again,was this situation not a symptom showing that the contradic-tion between the nascent socialist relations and the commod-ity and capitalist relations which had not disappeared was notbeing dealt with in a way that would make it possible to breakthrough the limits imposed on the volume of employment bythe reproduction of commodity and capitalist relations?

We have to see the question of unemployment in theseterms, and to answer these questions in the affirmative—which leads us to reject the idea that socialist relations were“absolutely” dominant in the state sector. That, however, wasthe idea held not only by economists like Lapidus and Os-trovityanov, but also by the Party leadership.

(a) The absence of a dialectical analysis ofthe system of social relations

The absence of a dialectical analysis of the production rela-tions prevailing in the state sector is clearly apparent in manydocuments produced by the Party leadership, and notably inthe political report presented by Stalin to the Fourteenth PartyCongress (December 1925). In this report the thesis of thesocialist character of the state enterprises was asserted in aone-sided way. The argument offered consisted of a series of


questions and answers that dealt with the matter undialecti-cally (that is, along the lines of “either this or that,” excludingthe possibility that something may have a dual nature, being“both this and its opposite”).

Speaking of the state-owned enterprises, Stalin asked:Are they state-capitalist enterprises? No, they are not. Why?Because they involve not two classes, but one class, the workingclass, which through its state owns the instruments and means ofproduction and which is not exploited. . . .

It may be said that, after all, this is not complete socialism,bearing in mind the survivals of bureaucracy persisting in themanaging bodies of our enterprises. That is true, but it does notcontradict the fact that state industry belongs to the socialist typeof production.57

The speech continued with a discussion of the Soviet stateand an argument by analogy in which reference was made toLenin’s analyses which showed that the Soviet workers’ statesuffered from many “bureaucratic survivals.” 58

However, in 1925 the significance actually ascribed to these“survivals,” at enterprise level and at state level, was ex-tremely limited. They were regarded as being, so to speak,super-added to the socialist and proletarian relations, andmodifying only in a secondary way the effects of these rela-tions and the conditions of their reproduction. Yet the pres-ence of such “survivals” several years after the October Revo-lution testifies to the existence of a contradictory combinationof proletarian and bourgeois relations both in the economicbasis and in the superstructure of the Soviet formation.59 Thissituation calls for analysis of the way in which these relationswere interlinked, and of the forms of domination of somerelations over others, and for the problems to be presented interms not of “survivals” but of the reproduction of a systemembracing elements of capitalist relations which could takethe form of state capitalism.

Without a concrete analysis of the system of contradictionsand its development, it is impossible to grasp the complexityof the real situation, or to deal correctly with the contradic-tions that this situation contains. Under these conditions one


has to operate through ideological conceptions which preventone from appreciating that the Soviet state is at once proletar-ian and nonproletarian. These conceptions also prevent onefrom realizing that even when an enterprise is socialist inform, the production relations reproduced within it may becapitalist (they can thus be “capitalist enterprises with asocialist signboard”), especially when they are not actuallymanaged by the working class and in conformity with thedemands of the building of socialism. The forms of develop-ment of industrial enterprises, the type of technology used inthem, and the number of jobs that there can be in them areconditioned not directly by the form assumed by the juridicalownership of these enterprises,60 but by the nature of theproduction relations that are reproduced in them, or by thedominant elements of these relations and by the form thatthese relations or these elements impose upon the reproduc-tion process, given the changes that this process may undergoas a result of the intervention of class struggles and of actionby the ruling power.

The forms of the division of labor which were characteristicof the industrial enterprises in the NEP period, the ways inwhich they were integrated in monetary and commodity rela-tions, and also the forms of the class struggle and of interven-tion by the ruling power, had as their consequence that theproduction relations reproduced in them were, to a predomi-nant extent, capitalist relations. The unemployment that de-veloped in that period was precisely the effect of the repro-duction of these relations, of the separation of the workersfrom their means of production.

In other words, labor power “functioned” mainly as acommodity of which wages were the “price”: as a commoditywhich was either embodied in the production process, orthrown out of it, depending on whether or not it could con-tribute to the valorization of capital.

This was not a matter of mere “objective necessity,” for thesocialist aspect of the production relations and the basicallyproletarian nature of the state power would have made itpossible to “set at naught” the “demands” of the valorization


of capital. Actually, there was a conjunction between the exis-tence of capitalist relations and the effects of the failure tomake a dialectical analysis, a failure which caused to be mis-taken for the demands of socialist expanded reproductionwhat were in reality the demands of the accumulation ofcapital.

(b) The practical effects of the absence of adialectical analysis of the existingsystem of social relations and of thecorrelative failure to deal adequatelywith the contradictions associated withthe reproduction of this system

Concretely, as we have seen, under the conditions of theNEP, the dominant aim of production in the state-owned en-terprises was to make a profit and to increase this profit.61 Thiswas what determined the use that the state enterprises madeof their capital: when they invested they had, in principle, toincrease their profits. Thus, the process of accumulationtended to favor the most “profitable” investments, to the det-riment of others. As between an investment that would enableproduction to be increased and more workers employed, butwhich (given the cost at which this additional productionwould be obtained) would increase only slightly the profitrealized, and another investment that would greatly increasethe profit realized, while increasing only slightly, or not at all,production and employment, it was the second investmentthat tended to be undertaken. In other words, if there was acontradiction between increasing production and employ-ment and increasing profit, this contradiction was usually “re-solved” in accordance with the capitalist law of increasingprofit.

The same tendencies prevailed when it was a question ofreplacing “obsolete” equipment. Where such equipmentexisted it was often possible to continue to use it (even if, atthe given level of prices and wages, the enterprise using it wasnot very profitable), provided some repairs were done, the


financing of which would reduce, more or less, the accumula-tion fund serving to create new production capacities of higher“profitability,” but it was equally possible to throw this oldequipment on the scrap heap and use the entire accumulationfund to replace it with equipment of “high profitability.” Al-though such replacement operations might not increase pro-duction (or might even reduce it), the striving to increaseprofit frequently led to them being favored, to the detriment ofincreases in production capacity.

This form of the accumulation process played an importantpart in the USSR during the second phase of the NEP. Thus,between 1926 and 1928 in the iron and steel industry, a largeamount of old equipment was scrapped in order to “mod-ernize” this industry and increase its profitability. The samething happened in the coal and oil industries in 1928–1929.Similarly, most of the investments made in the textile industrybetween 1926 and 1928 were aimed not at increasing produc-tion capacity but at making the industry “more profitable.”62

This form of the reproduction process subordinated the in-crease in the number of workers employed and the increase inproduction to the demands of increasing profit. Capital thusrestricted both production and employment, not because its“quantity” (and the mass of instruments of production thatmaterialized it) was inadequate but because the demand of itsvalorization and accumulation imposed a limit upon produc-tion and upon the employment of wage labor.

Thus, unemployment was not connected with the “inade-quacy” of the available means of production but with the formof the reproduction process and the demands to which thisprocess was subject.

IV. Expanded reproduction andaccumulation

During the NEP the process of expanded reproductionmainly took the form of a process of accumulation, of growth in


the value of the means of production, which were themselvessubject to the demands of self-valorization. This form wasdetermined by the place occupied by capitalist productionrelations (in the state sector as well as elsewhere) and by thepredominance of a system of thought which tended to identifyexpanded reproduction with accumulation. The ideas put for-ward by Preobrazhensky in The New Economics, and byLapidus and Ostrovityanov in the Outline of PoliticalEconomy, correspond to this identification. It was acknowl-edged in practice by the Bolshevik Party, and it furnished theinspiration of the Party’s economic policy.63

This identification had its roots in confusion between ex-panded reproduction of the material and human conditions ofproduction and expanded reproduction of capital, betweenthe process of growth of the quantity of use values availableand the process of growth of the value of the means of produc-tion serving a purpose of self-valorization. Under the capitalistmode of production these two processes of growth tend tocoincide, without ever doing so completely. (Under that modeof production, growth in the production of use values may alsoresult from changes in the production process which do notrequire previous accumulation and may even “release” capi-tal.) But capitalist growth in the production of use values isalways subject to the demands of self-valorization of capital;under the capitalist mode of production the growth of theproductive forces is only a secondary effect of the process ofaccumulation, and the contradictions of this process deter-mine the characteristics of capitalist and the contradictions ofthis process determine the characteristics of capitalist growthof the productive forces.64

The establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat andthe expropriation of the private capitalists create the begin-ning of the conditions needed for freeing from the constraintsof accumulation both the process of growth in the productionof use values and the entry of fresh labor power into theproduction process. Thus, a process of expanded reproductioncan develop which is increasingly “independent” of the pro-cess of accumulation. This development assumes that changes


take place in the immediate production process, changesthanks to which increases in production can be brought aboutby the initiatives of the direct producers, who have appro-priated their own general productive power 65 and set them-selves the aim of increasing the production of use values. Thisdevelopment also assumes that changes take place in the so-cial reproduction process, changes thanks to which the differ-ent production units establish a cooperation among them-selves that takes priority over the striving to increase the profitrealized by each of them. Such changes cannot be “sponta-neous”: the need for them has to be formulated and system-atically worked for, and that presupposes the implementing ofan appropriate political line.

Actually, for reasons to which we shall return later, such apolitical line did not take shape during the NEP period, eventhough the resolutions in favor of developing production con-ferences and mass criticism and self-criticism 66 adumbratedembryonic forms of this line.

And so, during the NEP period, expanded reproduction wasfundamentally subject to the demands of accumulation andthe valorization of capital, and from this there followed, wherethe evolution of employment and unemployment was con-cerned, a series of particularly grave consequences in a situa-tion in which the number of jobless in the towns was tendingto increase rapidly owning to migration from the countryside.

V. The characteristics of the relationsbetween classes and the domination ofexpanded reproduction by the demandsof accumulation

If, in the NEP period, the demands of accumulation im-posed their constraint on the principal form assumed by ex-panded reproduction, especially in industry, this was certainlydue to the theoretical conceptions that prevailed, and which


tended to identify expanded reproduction with accumulation.But the fact that these conceptions were predominant wasitself due to a certain state of class relations some essentialaspects of which need to be recalled.

The maintenance of what had initially been conceived astemporary measures (one-person management, the role ofspecialists and the resultant hierarchical relations, and khoz-raschet) corresponded to the consolidation of certain socialrelations and relations between classes. These relations sub-ordinated manual labor to mental labor, ensured the reproduc-tion of hierarchical relations within the “collective laborer,”and perpetuated relations of exteriority between the differentmembers of the working groups and between the differentworking groups subject to the constraints of commodity pro-duction and to those of a plan constructed “from above down-ward.” These social relations seriously restricted the pos-sibilities of increasing production on the basis of a process ofmass innovation. They tended to give predominance to pos-sibilities of increasing production through changes in the pro-duction process initiated from above, in which the means ofproduction were separated from the immediate producers andfunctioned as capital. In other words, the state of social rela-tions, and the corresponding relations between classes, actu-ally tended to subject expanded reproduction to the demandsof the accumulation of capital. Moreover, in the absence of acritical analysis of the consequences of these demands—ananalysis presupposing systematization of a sufficient body ofhistorical experience, drawing the balance sheet of a certainminimum of open struggles against the reproduction of existingrelations in their then current form—what was an objectivetendency was seen as a “necessary law.”

The state of social relations and relations between classeswhich has been described, and the absence of a systematiza-tion of open struggles against the reproduction of existingrelations such as would have provided the basis for a concretecriticism of the consequences of these relations (and notmerely a criticism inspired by abstract principles), were theresult of a complex historical process. This process was


marked by the “physical” weakening of the Soviet proletariatconsequent upon the civil war and the absorption of the bestproletarian forces into the Soviet administrative machinery,and then by the entry into the ranks of the proletariat of newforces, which began, though only toward the end of the NEPperiod (as we see from the events of 1928)67 to challengecertain forms of the immediate production process.

The initial weakening of the proletariat had as corollary thestrengthening of the role and functions of those who occupiedthe leading position in the process of production and repro-duction. These were either former bourgeois or—and this wasmore and more the case toward the end of the NEP—officialsof proletarian origin. The functions which these officials,whatever their origin, fulfilled in the process of productionand reproduction were bourgeois functions, associated withmanagement of processes which were those of the reproduc-tion of a “collective capital” (divided, though, into relativelyseparate fractions). In this way a social stratum came intobeing which objectively possessed a dual nature. It was pro-letarian by class origin and, generally speaking, by its devo-tion to the aims of the socialist revolution. It was bourgeois bythe functions it assumed and, sometimes, by the way in whichit fulfilled these functions and the way of life it adopted. Itthus tended, in some of its objective and subjective features, toconstitute a bourgeois force. This tendency took shape all themore easily because the working class (which was only inprocess of reconstitution) did not offer timely opposition to it,and because the Party, lacking experience in this field, andinfluenced by the conceptions of those of the leading eco-nomic cadres who were members of it, opposed the tendencyonly feebly. This relative passivity was itself an effect of theprocess of becoming independent of the masses which hadaffected the state and the Party apparatus alike68—a processthe counterpart of which was the too weak development ofthat socialist democracy without which no revolutionary trans-formation of production relations and productive forces can beaccomplished. Here, too, politics “commands” economics.


(a) The development of bourgeois featuresby the cadres holding posts ofleadership in the economic apparatuses,and the form of the reproductionprocess

The development of bourgeois features by the cadres hold-ing posts of leadership in the economic apparatuses affected inmany ways the form taken by the reproduction process. Here Ishall make only a few points.

In the first place, this development hindered the rise ofmass initiatives and criticism from below, and blocked thedevelopment of new production relations which could allownew, socialist forms of labor and of the productive forces toassert themselves. Under these conditions, the immense po-tential of latent productive forces contained within the Sovietsocial formation contributed only very little to the actual in-crease in production. This increase therefore continued basi-cally to depend above all on the process of accumulation.

The scrapping of “obsolete” equipment was due, also, toboth the theoretical notions which have already been men-tioned69 and to concrete intervention in the process of produc-tion and reproduction by the heads of the large state-ownedenterprises.

In a situation where mass unemployment existed, the “ob-solete” equipment which the state enterprises ceased to usefor reasons of “profitability” could, instead of being turnedinto scrap iron, have been used by unemployed workers or-ganized in cooperatives and by small local industrial enter-prises in the rural areas, for which peasants, perhaps workingpart time, could have provided the work force. Use of theequipment in this way would have enabled its potential forproduction and employment to be conserved. If the state fac-tories had handed over their relatively obsolete equipment toworkers’ cooperatives or small-scale rural industries, thiswould have increased total production capacity, employment,and resources for future accumulation. Operations of this sort

”


have been carried out on a large scale in the People’s Republicof China.

In the USSR, however, both in the NEP period and sub-sequently, such handing over of “obsolete” equipment tookplace but rarely. Furthermore, the heads of the large state-owned enterprises were, as a rule, hostile to the workers’cooperatives and local peasant industry, and tried to restricttheir field of activity. They often succeeded in doing this,despite the attitude or principle maintained by the Party,which, throughout most of the NEP period, declared itself infavor of local industry.

The feebleness of the help given to workers’ cooperativesand peasants’ local industry was due, certainly in part, toideological reasons (to a bourgeois conception of “technicalprogress”) in the name of which a connection was made be-tween “socialism” and the “advanced state” of technology,leading to condemnation of the use of “obsolete” technicalmeans. This was what lay behind a statement like Kuibyshev’sin October 1927 that “socialism is a technically higher stage ofdevelopment of society” 70—a one sided interpretation of cer-tain formulations by Lenin which appear sometimes to ascribea major role to “the development of technology.”

But it was not ideology that was the most important factor inthis conflict between large-scale state-owned industry, on theone hand, and the workers’ cooperatives and peasants’ localindustry, on the other, a conflict of which two immediate ef-fects were increased unemployment and the flight from thecountryside. The principal factor here was the action taken bythe heads of the state enterprises (and those of the state eco-nomic organs with which they were connected), aimed atkeeping control over all industrial activity. Their action soughtto increase the scope of the operations for which they wereresponsible, and sometimes also the income they derived fromthem (particularly in the form of percentages).

Such action can be observed at a number of levels.71 Itenabled large-scale state-owned industry to keep at its dis-posal a more numerous industrial reserve army than wouldotherwise have been the case, and one which included skilledworkers. It made possible a tightening of factory discipline


and higher “profitability” for the big enterprises, which alsohelped to establish the idea that the big enterprises“functioned better” than the small ones.

The measures taken by the central economic organs to theadvantage of the big enterprises favored the most highly de-veloped forms of the capitalist division of labor and the subor-dination of expanded reproduction to the accumulation of cap-ital, thus contributing, in the given conditions, to an increasein unemployment.

This type of development was thus based upon the pre-dominance in industry of expanded reproduction of the socialrelations and relations between classes that were characteris-tic of the large-scale enterprises. This predominance wasfacilitated by the limited nature of the proletarian class actionsdirected against the existing forms of division of labor and bythe absence of a critical analysis.

(b) The level of wages, the “profitability” ofdifferent techniques, and the problemof unemployment

Under NEP conditions the development of unemploymentseems to have been determined by the very limited size of theaccumulation fund, by the will to invest this fund preferably in“profitable” techniques, and by the fact that only those in-vestments appeared “profitable” which made possible the in-stallation of “up-to-date” equipment. Investments like theseabsorbed a large proportion of the investment fund while notdirectly engendering more than a limited number of jobs.

But the “profitability” of different types of investment is nota “technical datum”: it is bound up with the levels of pricesand wages and with the type of discipline prevailing in theproduction units. Throughout the NEP period, the wage levelrose steadily, despite the amount of unemployment and itstendency to increase. This rising wage level created anincentive—in the name of “profitability”—for those tech-niques to be preferred which were comparatively costly interms of capital but which “economized” on living labor. Thisbeing so, we need to look into the reasons determining the


increase in wages which took place regardless of the cam-paigns that were continually being waged to “stabilize” themand prevent their increase from swelling the costs of produc-tion.

To a certain extent, this increase in wages taking place inspite of the presence of unemployment may seem to be linkedwith the position held by the working class as a result of theestablishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Such aninterpretation is problematical, however, in that the form as-sumed by expanded reproduction was such that the increasein the wages of those who had jobs produced a negative effecton the standard of living of the proletariat as a whole, bystimulating an increase in unemployment.

Actually, concrete analysis shows that, in general, wageincreases were effected contrary to the provisions of the an-nual plans, and were connected above all with the develop-ment of the contradictions within the production units. In sofar as the heads of enterprises restricted the workers’ initiativeand opposed the development of movements of mass criti-cism, wage increases served as a means of appeasing thediscontent of the workers motivated by the conditions inwhich they lived and worked. The increases granted in 1927and 1928 had their source, fundamentally, in this system ofcontradictions. They were the result of a particular form ofclass struggle, and were the corollary of the absence ofchanges in the form of the immediate production process. Thisabsence had also some effects on the inequalities in wages.72

(c) The predominant form of labordiscipline and the type of technologicaldevelopment

The existence of the contradictions just mentioned meansthat the dominant aspect of labor discipline in the state-ownedenterprises was at that time a capitalist type of discipline—with which the recourse to piece wages and material incen-tives was connected. The strengthening of this type of disci-pline also tended to favor the adoption of those forms of thelabor process in which the machine is used as a means of


imposing “its own discipline” upon the direct producers.73

In other words, the failure to develop a genuine socialistlabor discipline combined with the role played by the strivingfor “profitability” led, under the conditions that prevailed inthe NEP period, to identifying the outlook for technologicalchanges in the Soviet factories with the changes which hadaken place in the capitalist countries. It is particularly sig-nificant that the Outline of Political Economy by Lapidus andOstrovityanov, in a section which, since it is entitled “SocialistTechnique,” leads the reader to expect at least some indica-tion of the distinction between “socialist technique” andcapitalist technique, puts the problem like this: “What are themain lines of technical development in the Soviet Union?They follow from the tendencies which we pointed out inanalysing capitalist technique.”74

Which amounts to saying that “socialist technique” hasmerely to follow the road of capitalist technique. To be sure,the Outline is able to refer to various passages in Lenin to“justify” this conception75—but these passages had been writ-ten seven years earlier, before the task of restoring the Sovieteconomy had been accomplished. The fact that once this taskhad been accomplished, and the tasks of reconstructing indus-try were being faced, no new prospect appeared in the field oftechnique, shows that the existing social relations and rela-tions between classes did not allow the question of a radicaltransformation of technical development to be put on theagenda.

Thus, to the dominance of the capitalist form of expandedreproduction there corresponded predominance of thecapitalist forms of technical change, or, more generally, of thecapitalist form of development of the productive forces.

VI. The form of the reproduction processand the nature of the relations betweenclasses

Taken as a whole, the form assumed by the reproductionprocess under the NEP was determined by the historical


limits within which the class struggles unfolded in the SovietUnion: it was within these limits that the changes undergoneby the process of production and reproduction occurred. Thelimits themselves were set, on the plane of social forces, bythe weakness of the Soviet proletariat. This weakness was notso much “numerical” as ideological. It was a matter of theslight extent to which the proletarian ideology had penetratedthe masses,76 a circumstance itself connected with the poordevelopment of socialist democracy. On the plane of theoreti-cal ideology it was connected with the absence of a rigorousanalysis of the nature of the existing production relations andof the need to struggle to change them so as to make decisiveprogress toward socialism. This “ideological limitation” wasrooted in the history of the class struggles and in the effectsthat these struggles had had upon the changes in the Bol-shevik ideological formation. The forms taken by these classstruggles did not allow the development of a rigorous analysisof the social relations and relations between classes existing inthe NEP period.

It is difficult to analyze production relations and class rela-tions under the NEP because of the extremely contradictorynature of these relations and of the completely new forms thatthey assumed. Even today, when we possess a much longerand broader historical experience, together with the lessonsdrawn from it by Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese CommunistParty, this analysis can be made on only a certain level ofabstraction. But even so limited a type of analysis is indis-pensable if we are to grasp the movement of the contradic-tions.

One of the essential points is this: that the existence of whatLenin called “the system of the dictatorship of the pro-letariat”77 did not cause the proletariat to “disappear,” butmodified its form of existence and its relations with the otherclasses of society.78

In the NEP period, this system retained the essential fea-tures it had possessed in 1921, though the expansion of themachinery of state, the development of khozraschet (in theform in which this was then practiced) and of the banking and


financial apparatuses, together with the strengthening of fac-tory discipline, had changed the forms of separation of theworking class from its means of production.

It was because of this separation that the working class wasstill a proletariat: the proletariat cannot disappear until allforms of separation between the direct producers and theirmeans of production have disappeared. However, the exis-tence of the system of the dictatorship of the proletariatimplies the destruction of part of the previous relations of sep-aration, in particular, because, through the system of its or-ganization (Party, trade unions and soviets) the proletariat isunited with its means of production and is able, to someextent, to determine the use that is made of them. In otherwords, the Soviet working class is at once a proletariat andnot a proletariat: a proletariat, in so far as it is separated fromits means of production and integrated in a system of capitalistrelations which have undergone only partial changes; not aproletariat, in so far as it is united with its means of productionand dominates them through the development of new socialrelations79 in the superstructure and in the economic basis.

The specific features assumed by this dual nature of theproletariat change as a result of class struggles: the destructionof the relations of separation consolidates the dictatorship ofthe proletariat and at the same time helps to put an end to theconditions that make the working class a proletariat.

In the NEP period, the Soviet proletariat, at the level of theimmediate production relations and of the dominant form ofthe reproduction process, remained fundamentally separatedfrom its means of production: the domination it exercised overthe latter was effected essentially through certain of itsorganizations—actually, above all, through the BolshevikParty as the organized vanguard of the proletariat (which itwas in so far as its ideology and its ties with the massesenabled it to serve effectively the historical interests of theproletariat and thereby of all mankind).

Since the proletariat had not disappeared, neither had thebourgeoisie, though its form of existence and its relations withthe other classes had been modified. The chief modification


concerned the agents who played a leading role in the repro-duction of capitalist production relations in the state sector.They constituted a bourgeoisie which was at the same timenot a bourgeoisie: a bourgeoisie, in so far as it carried out itsdirecting task on the basis of the reproduction of (more or lessaltered) capitalist relations; but not a bourgeoisie, in so far as itcarried out this task under conditions that were entirely new,that is, in so far as it was subordinated ideologically andpolitically to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Here, too, the specific features assumed by the dual natureof this bourgeoisie, which is at the same time not abourgeoisie, change as a result of class struggles: the destruc-tion or strengthening of the relations of separation dependsabove all upon the struggle of the workers themselves and thecorrect guidance of this struggle. The successes won in thisstruggle affect social relations in their entirety. They contri-ute to the elimination, stage by stage, of the ideology andpractices which tend to be reproduced on the basis of theexistence of production relations that have as yet been onlypartially transformed.

The elimination of bourgeois ideology and practices is acondition of the changing of the production relations themelves: hence the decisive role played by the ideological classstruggle, especially as regards style of work and leadership,and socialist democracy. This struggle is of decisive impor-tance not only in the production units but also in all theideological apparatuses.

To the dual nature of the proletariat and the bourgeoiswhich characterizes the socialist transition (and which as-sumed specific features in the NEP period) there correspondsthe struggle between the two roads which is inherent in thistransition. The socialist road triumphs in proportion ascapitalist social relations and the corresponding social prac-tice are destroyed. Historically, this destruction is indispens-able if the dictatorship of the proletariat is to be consolidated:as Marx noted, “The political rule of the producer cannotcoexist with the perpetuation of his social slavery.” 80 The“perpetuation” of social slavery is bound up with the repro-


duction of capitalist relations on the plane of production andreproduction. If the class struggle of the workers themselvesdoes not put an end to this, it tends necessarily to underminetheir political domination and put an end to that.

To the dual nature of the classes in the NEP period corre-sponded the dual nature of the State, of the Party (in whichwas concentrated the struggle between the proletarian lineand the bourgeois line), and of the process of production andreproduction.

On this last point, it must be emphasized once more that theproduction of surplus value (connected with the reproductionof the value and wage forms which ensure the merging ofthe expenditure of necessary labor with the expenditure ofsurplus labor) ceases to signify exploitation in so far as theuse made of the surplus value is no longer dominated exclu-sively by the laws of the capitalist mode of production, but isdirected by the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat—for which profit and accumulation, even if they continue to bemeans serving the development of production, cease to beproduction’s purpose.

VII. The changing of the form of thereproduction process at the end of theNEP

At the end of the NEP period two decisive factors came intoplay which modified the form of the reproduction process.These two factors were interconnected, but it was the secondthat played the determining role, because it was directly con-nected with a change in the relations between classes.

(a) The extension of the domain of planning

The first factor which altered the conditions of reproductionwas the extension of planning. This does not mean thatplanning became more “precise’’ and more “coherent” (on the


contrary, the First Five-Year Plan, with the subsequent mod-ifications and the annual plans of that first quinquennium,were particularly lacking in coherence), but that the impera-tives of the plan now extended, in principle, to all aspects ofeconomic activity, and in particular to the bulk of investments,which thereafter passed through the state budget. This exten-sion restricted the effects of khozraschet, in so far as the latterhad intended to maintain a certain connection between theprofitability of each enterprise and the amount invested in it.The overall investment plan aimed to break this connectionand to subject the process of accumulation to demands otherthan those corresponding to the making of the maximum profitby each enterprise, or to the equalization of the rates of profitin the various branches of industry.

Planning sought to realize the largest possible overall ac-cumulation and to ensure the fastest possible growth of indus-try, on the basis of priority development of heavy industry.True, the concrete conditions in which the plans were drawnup, revised, and put into effect did not make it possible to saythat the tasks thus assigned to planning were actually fulfilled,but the aim that planning pursued did tend to alter radicallysome of the effects of the “separation” between state enter-prises instituted by khozraschet.

In place of a distribution of investments that depended,more or less, on sectoral “profitability” there was substituted adistribution dominated by a striving to achieve acceleration ofthe growth of production, and, in the first place, of productionby heavy industry. In the language of the period, the demandsof “profitability” at the level of enterprises and branches weresuperseded, in principle, by the demands of “profitability onthe scale of society as a whole.”

This meant a break with the previous form of the reproduc-tion process. To a certain extent, this break took place in thedirection of a socialist development of the economy, but itnevertheless remained subject to the demands of the valori-zation process: it was only the scale of this process that wasenlarged.

Maintenance of the demands of the valorization process was


expressed in the importance still accorded to economic calcu-lations in terms of prices, and, even more, in the overall limitswhich the amount of accumulation set to increased employ-ment. These limits implied that “unprofitable techniques”still tended to be eliminated, even when they made possibleincreases in employment and production.

The existence of these limits was manifested in the variousdrafts and successive variants of the First Five-Year Plan.81

These different drafts all made provision for the retention ofa considerable number of unemployed. It was only with the“great turn” that unemployment vanished: thereafter, indeed,the poor capacity of state industry for internal accumulationtended to be made up for by “primitive accumulation” con-nected with levying of “tribute” from the peasantry. Actually,this tribute had already begun to be exacted by means of the“emergency measures,” which enabled deliveries of agricul-tural produce to be obtained without the counterpart of de-liveries to the peasants of industrial goods of the same value.The tribute was subsequently increased by the exactionsforced out of agriculture through the framework of collectivi-zation.82

(b) The recourse to “primitiveaccumulation” and the change in classrelations

Ultimately “the extension of planning” (in the sense givento this expression) was made possible by a radical change inclass relations, through the elimination of private trade andindustry and through collectivization, which put an end to theindividual peasant farms of old.

The elimination of private trade and industry and of tra-ditional individual peasant farming signified a victory ofsocialist economic forms, a victory of the proletariat over theprivate bourgeoisie. However, as will be seen in the nextvolume, the means employed to achieve this end were not, inthe main, proletarian means—the changes were broughtabout “from above”—and this limited the political and social


significance of the changes effected, strengthening thecapitalist elements in the production relations that were re-produced in the state and cooperative sectors, andstrengthening the bourgeois aspects of the state machine.

If the victory of the socialist forms resulted mainly from thecarrying out of measures taken “from above,” this was becauseit was not the culmination of a broad struggle by the masses. Itwas essentially the result of the contradictions in the processof accumulation, of the fact that, in the absence of a massstruggle, it had not proved possible to free the process ofreproduction from the constraints of accumulation, and so thelimits of accumulation had had to be shifted by bringing intoplay constraint by the state.

For this reason as well as for others (connected with theabsence of sufficiently thoroughgoing internal changes in thefunctioning of state industry), the victory of socialist economicforms was not accompanied by the disappearance of the limitsthat the demands of accumulation imposed upon expandedreproduction. But though these limits did not disappear, theywere shifted through the extension of socialist economicforms. This shift entailed in its turn a series of contradictoryeffects, due to the very conditions under which it had beenmade. On the one hand it strengthened the dictatorship of theproletariat, by ensuring a rapid increase in the size ofthe working class, abolishing unemployment, and enabling theSoviet Union to become a great industrial power. On theother, it weakened the dictatorship of the proletariat by caus-ing a split in the worker-peasant alliance, starting an unprece-dented crisis in agriculture, and giving rise to the devel-opment of apparatuses of coercion and repression whichextended their activity to the broad masses and set backsocialist democracy.

An upheaval in relations between classes, the historicalimplications of which can be estimated only through concreteanalysis of all its consequences, was the ultimate content ofthe final crisis of the NEP. This crisis was led up to by thefailure really to consolidate the worker-peasant alliance andthe impossibility of freeing the reproduction process from the


constraints of the process of accumulation. These two factorsin the final crisis of the NEP were related also to the ideologi-cal and political relations in which the Soviet proletariat andits vanguard, the Bolshevik Party, were integrated, and so tothe forms of organization of the working class.

Notes

1. Lapidus and K. Ostrovityanov, Outline, p. 176 (my emphasis—C. B.).

2. Ibid., p. 177 (my emphasis—C. B.).3. Ibid.4. Ibid.5. Ibid., p. 98.6. Ibid., p. 99—100.7. Without entering upon a discussion of all the problems involved

here, let us merely recall these few formulations by Marx:

Wages represent also wage-labour, which is examined in adifferent section; the particular function that labour per-forms as a factor of production in the one case appears as afunction of distribution in the other. If labour did not havethe distinct form of wage-labour, then its share in the prod-uct would not appear as wages. . . . The structure of dis-tribution is entirely determined by the structure of produc-tion. Distribution itself is a product of production, not onlywith regard to the content . . . but also with regard to theform, since the particular mode of men’s participation inproduction determines the specific form of distribution, theform in which they share in distribution. (Critique of Politi-cal Economy, p. 200.)

Again:

The wage presupposes wage-labour, and profit—capital.These definite forms of distribution thus presuppose definitesocial characteristics of production conditions, and definiterelations of production-agents. The specific distribution rela-tions are thus merely the expression of the specific historicalproduction-relations. . . . Capitalist distribution differs


from those forms of distribution which arise from othermodes of production, and every form of distribution disap-pears with the specific form of production from which it isdescended and to which it corresponds. (Capital [Moscow],vol. III, pp. 860–861.)

8. Lapidus and Ostrovityanov, Outline, p . 99.9. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, p. 689. This resolution also noted

that if industrial accumulation was to be achieved by means ofsubsidies from the budget, this would mean it was beingachieved at the expense of the peasantry.

10. See above, pp. 291–292.11. Marx, Capital (London), vol. I, p. 165.12. See Bettelheim, Economic Calculation and Forms of Property,

pp. 67-68. However, in this passage there is too one-sided astress laid upon the objective conditions, resulting in underesti-mation of the necessary role of the ideological class struggle inthe changing of the production relations themselves.

13. These were the terms used by Lenin to describe, in 1921, thenature of the “socialist republic of soviets,” an expression whichhe said did not signify “that the existing economic system isrecognized as a socialist order” (Lenin, CW, vol. 32, p. 330; seealso volume I of the present work, p. 445).

14. On this point see Marx, Grundrisse, p. 470.15. Ibid., p. 158.16. Ibid., p. 168.17. The partial disappearance of this character (connected with the

existence of state ownership of the means of production andactual use thereof in conformity with the economic aims of a stateof the dictatorship of the proletariat) does indeed give rise tonew, socialist relations, but, so long as it remains partial, it per-mits the survival, in changed (but nevertheless possibly domi-nant) form, of commodity and capitalist relations or elements ofthese relations. This was what Mao Tse-tung meant when hespoke of “socialist relations of production” being “still far fromperfect” in China (“On the Correct Solution [Handling—m2m] ofContradictions Among the People,” in Four Essays on Philoso-phy, p. 94).

18. The notion of “collective capital,” resulting from state owner-ship, is found in Marx and Engels—e.g., in Capital (London), vol.I, p. 779.

19. Marx, Capital (Moscow), vol. III, p. 431. I have italicized theword “employment” (in the French version, “mise en valeur”)


because it is precisely in the subordination of labor to the pro-duction of exchange values, and not to the production of usevalues for the satisfaction of collectively calculated social needs,that the line of demarcation runs between the situation of these“co-operators” and that in which all the means of production are“in the hands of associated producers” (ibid, p. 430).

20. Lapidus and Ostrovityanov, Outline, pp. 178-–179.21. On the layoffs at the start of NEP, see S. G. Strumilin, Na

khozyaistvennom fronte, p. 86, and Na novykh putyakh, III, p.14, quoted in E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 2, p. 321.

22. Narodnoye Khozyaistvo SSSR: statistichesky spravochnik; andA. Baykov, The Soviet Economic Systems, p. 147; also Voprosytruda v tsifrakh i diagrammakh 1922–1926 gg.

23. According to a statistical source of 1929 (EkonomicheskoyeObozreniye, no. 9 [1929], p. 124), the number of workers (includ-ing office workers) employed in census industry rose from2,678,000 (a figure close to that for 1913) in 1925–1926 to3,366,000 in 1928–1929—an increase of nearly 700,000, or 27percent, in three years. During the same period the total numberof wage earners, including those employed in the administration,rose from 10,173,000 to 12,168,000—an increase of about twomillion, or nearly 20 percent. The rate of increase in employmentwas highest in the building industry, where it more than dou-bled, reaching the figure of 918,000 (Carr and Davies, Founda-tions, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 955). Out of more than 12 million wageearners employed in 1928–1929, 2,500,000 were employed in theadministration and services (education, health, justice, the eco-nomic administrations) and two million in agriculture, forestry,and fisheries. At that time the urban population was 29 millionand the rural population, 125.3 million (ibid., pp. 454, 955).

24. Sotsialisticheskoye Khozyaistvo, no. 4 (1925), p. 413.25. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 456, and Voprosy

Truda, July–August 1935, p. 46.26. Pravda, November 29, 1927.27. Pravda, January 29, 1927.28. The size of this “flood” was certainly substantial. Thus, at the

Fifteenth Party Congress it was admitted that in 1927, 500,000peasants from Tambov region had been obliged to try and findwork in industry, and that 220,000 peasants from Ryazan regionhad had to go to Moscow, Leningrad, and other towns in search ofseasonal employment (XV-y Syezd VKP[b] [1962], vol. 2, pp.


1094, 1254, 1256; quoted in Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I,pt. 2, p. 453, n. 3).

29. SSSR: IV Syezd Sovyetov (1927), pp. 428–429.30. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 927.31. Those who talked of “rural overpopulation” and of “land short-

age” did not deny that the exodus from the countryside wasmainly an exodus of landless and poor peasants, and that a freshdivision of the land might, therefore, have slowed down the flowof rural migrants, though without stopping it altogether, since, inany case, the average amount of land per peasant was regarded asbeing “insufficient.” However, there was no question, in the1920s, of carrying out a fresh division of the land, for it wasaccepted that only peasant farms of a certain size were capable ofproviding the marketed production that was indispensable forthe feeding of the towns.

32. See above, pp. 300–301.33. Strumilin, Na Plamovom Fronte, pp. 448 ff.34. Sechster Kongress der Kommunistischen Internationale, vol. III

(1928), p. 519, quoted in Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt.2, p. 466.

35. No less surprisingly (but to be explained likewise by the con-juncture of the class struggle), the chief obstacle to a substantialincrease in the number of wage workers was only rarely men-tioned in the discussions about unemployment, though it wasmore or less taken into account in the “control figures” drawn upby Gosplan from 1925 on. This obstacle was constituted by thequantity of goods available on the market. If one was not to allowphenomena of shortage and price increase to develop, it was notpossible to allow a mass of incomes to be formed that would belarger than the available counterpart (at the given level of prices)in the form of purchasable commodities. And, given the differ-ence in income between the poor peasants (who were the peas-ants who were looking for jobs in industry) and the workers, the“conversion” of “too many” of the former into wage workerswould risk causing an increase in shortages (unless this conver-sion was carried out under conditions different from those whichwere then characteristic of state industry and guided its de-velopment).

36. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, p. 322.37. Ibid., vol. 9, p. 177.38. Ibid., vol. 11, p. 167.39. See above, p. 194.


40. Sobranie Zakonov, no. 41 (1927), art. 410.41. The average wage of an agricultural worker was 313 roubles in

1928, when the average wage in industry was 823 roubles (Trudv SSSR [1936], statistical handbook, pp. 10, 97, quoted in O.Hoeffding, Soviet National Income and Product in 1928, p. 67).From 1926 on there was an increase in the proportion of workerscoming from the rural areas who retained their holdings in thevillages: In the Donbas mines 37.4 percent of the workers takenon between 1926 and 1929 kept their land, and this was the casewith 28.4 percent of the workers in the Moscow metal industry(Sostav fabrichno-zavodskogo proletariata SSSR [1930], quotedin Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 455).

42. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 459.43. Trud, October 26, 1926.44. This contributed to increasing the proportion of young persons

among the unemployed. In 1928 43.6 percent of the registeredunemployed were aged between 18 and 24, and 30.8 percentaged between 24 and 29 (VIII-oy Syezd ProfessionalnykhSoyuzov SSSR [1928], p. 323).

45. Izvestiya, January 14, 1925.46. Trud, December 1, 1926.47. Sobranie Zakonov, no. 62 (1928), art. 563.48. On the decree of March 26, 1928, see Yezhenedelnik Sovyetskoy

Yustitsii, nos.46–47 (1928), quoted in Carr and Davies, Founda-tions, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 465, n. 5.

49. Kontrolnye tsifry 1928–1929 gg., p. 20.50. In 1927 the area actually cultivated was 97.4 percent of what it

had been in 1913. Between these same years the rural populationhad grown by 7 percent, and the number of farms by 21 percent(S. Grosskopf, L’Alliance ouvrière, p. 381).

51. After the October Revolution there were various types of peas-ants’ mutual-aid committees (Krestkomy, or KKOV). In theRSFSR a decree of March 29, 1926, provided for land to beplaced free of charge at the disposal of these committees, butthey did not come to much. A report presented to Rabkrin in thespring of 1928 pointed to their stagnation (Pravda, April 7,1928).

52. See above, pp. 99 ff. and 105 ff.53. Sobranie Uzakonenii, no. 70 (1926), art. 548.54. XV-taya Konferentsiya VKP(b) (1927), pp. 253–254.55. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, pp. 927-929, and G.

von Mende, Studien zur Kolonisation der Sowjetunion.56. To some extent this “colonization” meant settlement by rich


peasants who had the personal means needed in order to estab-lish themselves on new land (R. Lorenz, Sozialgeschichte derSowjetunion 1917–1945, p. 140).

57. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, p. 312.58. See volume I of the present work, especially pp. 33 ff. and 490 ff.59. We know that in December 1920 Lenin counterposed to the

oversimplified conception put forward by Trotsky, who spoke ofthe Soviet state as a “workers’ state,” without analyzing its con-tradictions, the following observation: “The whole point is that itis not quite a workers’ state.” He then spoke of the “bureaucraticdistortions” of the Soviet state, which made it necessary for theworkers to defend themselves against the workers’ state (Lenin,CW, vol. 32, pp. 24, 48). Soon afterward, opposing the positionsthen maintained by Trotsky and Bukharin, Lenin made moreexplicit the content of his own position, by recalling that “Dialec-tics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in theirconcrete development but not a patchwork of bits and pieces”(ibid., vol. 32, p. 91). The pertinence of these formulations makesit inadmissible that, after several years’ existence of the Sovietstate and the state-owned enterprises, anyone should be satisfiedto talk, “on the one hand,” of their socialist character and, “on theother” of “bureaucratic survivals.” It necessitates considerationof these realities in all their aspects and connections, in theirdevelopment and their contradictions (ibid., vol. 32, p. 94).

60. This form belongs to the political level: it makes possible undercertain conditions, a certain transformation of the productionrelations, but it does not directly determine such a transforma-tion.

61. The dominance of this aim did not, of course, drop from heaven,but reflected the objective conditions of reproduction: the lowlevel of development of socialist relations effectively subordi-nated the expanded reproduction of the productive forces to anaccumulation which, in the given conditions, depended above allon the self-valorization of the capital functioning in the statesector. At the beginning of the 1930s the attempt to increase the“tribute” levied from the peasantry was to “free” (temporarilyand partially) from this constraint the expanded reproduction ofthe productive forces.

62. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 1, p. 417.63. This identification led to the assertion that, as regards the inter-

nal functioning of the state sector, increased employment wasdetermined in the last analysis by increased profit.


64. Under the capitalist mode of production the principal aspect ofthe process of accumulation is that it is a process of exploitation, aprocess of bourgeois class struggle for increased exploitation ofthe proletariat (see A. D. Magaline, Lutte de classes et dèvalori-sation du capital).

65. See above, p. 50 ff., the quotation from Marx’s Grundrisse.66. See above, p. 290.67. See above, pp. 222–233.68. See volume I of the present work, pp. 255, 285, 303, 309, 399,

408.69. See above, p. 306.70. II-ya Sessiya TsIK SSSR 4 Soyuza (1927?), p. 250, quoted in Carr

and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 1, p. 415 (my emphasis—C. B.).

71. See above, pp. 202 ff.72. See above, pp. 248 ff.73. On this see H. Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital,

pp. 169 ff.74. Lapidus and Ostrovityanov, Outline, p. 485.75. Ibid., pp. 485–486.76. See volume I of the present work, pp. 93–94.77. See volume I of the present work, p. 97 ff.78. See also Lenin’s “Economics and politics in the era of the dic-

tatorship of the proletariat,” in CW, vol. 30, p. 115.79. These new social relations concern also the political relations,

the forms of proletarian socialist democracy. The actual de-velopment of these forms (the decisive importance of whichLenin showed in his The State and Revolution) determinedchanges in the relations between the producers and the means ofproduction belonging to the State, and this development helps tochange the economic basis and is a condition of the strengthen-ing of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

80. Marx, The Civil War in France, in Marx and Engels, SelectedWorks in Three Volumes, vol. 2, p. 223.

81. On the successive drafts of this plan see Carr and Davies, Foun-dations, vol. I, pt. 2, pp. 837 ff.

82. In fact this “tribute” was soon exhausted, and the accumulationfund had to be increased by way of increased prices and thelowering of real wages. This development will be analyzed involume III of the present work.

330

6. The forms of organization of theworking class

The ideological relations in which the working class wasintegrated in the NEP period were complex and diverse.There is no lack of “sources” for them, but these are, generallyspeaking, indirect, and also more or less “controlled,” so thatthere is practically no expression in them of certain ideologi-cal currents. These “sources” consist of readers’ letters pub-lished in the newspapers; novels and short stories in whichthe workers’ lives are “described,” with their reactions toeveryday problems, to the decisions taken by the Party and thegovernment, and so on; and also reports presented to con-gresses, conferences, and other meetings of the Party and thetrade unions; and internal reports of the Party and the OGPU,some of which have been published. Nevertheless, it is not easy,and is sometimes even impossible, to succeed by means ofsuch sources (the content of which can usually not be dis-sociated from the ideological or political purposes aimed at bythose who composed or published them) in grasping the di-versity of the ideological currents running through the differ-ent strata of the working class, and the changes these currentsunderwent in the course of a period so lively as the NEP years.

However, the chief ideological currents running throughthe working class were reflected, even if only partially and inan inevitably impoverished or simplified form, in the activityand the decisions of the organizations of the working class,and also in the open demonstrations in which the active ele-ments of this class took part. It is at this level, the one mostdirectly linked with the taking of political decisions, that Ishall endeavor to define certain aspects of the ideologicalchanges undergone by the Soviet working class in the NEPperiod, and especially toward the end of it. We therefore need


to pay attention here, first and foremost, to the principal formsof working-class organization and to the place occupied by theworkers in these organizations.

I. The development of the Bolshevik Party

The Bolshevik Party was the vanguard of the Soviet pro-letariat by virtue of its class basis, its ideology, and its politicalline. The last two factors are of vital importance in this context.Theory and practice alike teach us that the fact that a party isrooted in the working class is not enough to make it a prole-tarian party. There are many examples of “labor parties” which,because of their ideology and political line, are actually in theservice of the bourgeoisie and therefore constitute what Lenincalled “bourgeois labor parties.” Conversely, the working-class members of a proletarian party may be relatively few(especially in a country where the working class itself is notlarge) without that circumstance damaging its proletariancharacter, which is determined by its ideology and politicalline. It is very important, all the same, to analyze the classcomposition of the Bolshevik Party, because the presence inthe Party of members who did not belong to the working classexerted constant pressure upon its ideology and its politicalline.

We shall examine in the last part of this volume the princi-pal aspects of the ideological and political struggles waged inthe Bolshevik Party between 1924 and 1929. For the moment,we shall confine ourselves to looking at the ways in which theworking class and other classes or social groups were presentin the Bolshevik Party.1

(a) The increase in Party membership

In 1929 the Bolshevik Party was profoundly different fromwhat it had been before Lenin’s death. It had then taken a bigstep toward becoming transformed from a Party made up of


revolutionary militants (which it had been in 1917) into anorganization possessing some of the characteristics of a massparty. This transformation, which had begun (but only begun)in Lenin’s lifetime, started to take definite shape in 1929: thechange was bound up with the new and numerous tasks whichthe Party had to carry out once the dictatorship of the pro-letariat had been established.

Two figures enable us to perceive the magnitude of thequantitative change referred to. On January 1, 1923, the Bol-shevik Party had 499,000 members; on January 1, 1930, it had1,680,000.2 We thus see that in seven years the Party’s mem-bership had more than trebled—which means, among otherthings, that towards the end of the NEP the majority of themembers had only a very brief experience of the political lifeof their organization.

The initial impetus to this rapid expansion was given in1924, immediately after Lenin’s death, with what were calledthe “Lenin enrollments.” 3 As a result of the entry of theserecruits, on January 1, 1926, the Party had 1,080,000members—more than twice as many as in 1923.4

The official aim of the recruitment campaign of 1924 and1925, and also of that of 1927 (the “October enrolment”), wasto proletarianize the Party—that is, to strengthen itsworking-class basis.

There is reason, however, to question the actual class con-sequences of the mass-scale recruitment carried out between1924 and 1930, especially in the first years of the NEP. Untilabout 1925–1926 the persons working in the factories wereoften far from being genuine, long-established proletarians.Lenin drew the Party’s attention more than once to this situa-tion. At the Eleventh Party Congress, on March 27, 1922, hesaid: “During the war people who were by no means prole-tarians went into the factories; they went into the factories tododge the war. Are the social and economic conditions in ourcountry today such as to induce real proletarians to go into thefactories? No. . . . Very often those who go into the factoriesare not proletarians; they are casual elements of every descrip-tion.” 5


The day before he made this speech, Lenin had sent a letterto the members of the CC in which he warned against thepossible effects of mass recruitment. The reasons for thiswarning were those he set out in his speech of March 27, buthe also mentioned another, of a more permanent order—namely, the danger of infiltration into a “ruling party” ofbourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements motivated bycareerism, and prepared to disguise themselves as “workers”in order to get into the Party. Lenin wrote: “It must be bornein mind that the temptation to join the ruling party at thepresent time is very great.” 6 And he added that, if the Partyachieved fresh successes, then

there will be a big increase in the efforts of petty-bourgeoiselements, and of elements positively hostile to all that is proletar-ian, to penetrate into the Party. Six months’ probation for work-ers will not diminish this pressure in the least, for it is the easiestthing in the world for anyone to qualify for this short probationperiod. . . . From all this I draw the conclusion that. . . . wemust without fail, define the term ‘worker’ in such a way as toinclude only those who have acquired a proletarian mentalityfrom their very conditions of life. But this is impossible unlessthe persons concerned have worked in a factory for many years—not from ulterior motives, but because of the general conditionsof their economic and social life.7

Lenin proceeded to lay down a number of requirementsaimed at ensuring a truly proletarian recruitment, and em-phasized the need for “reducing” the number of Party mem-bers.8 Actually, the requirements specified by Lenin were notobserved, and the Party’s membership, instead of being re-duced, was very quickly increased. In principle, as has beensaid, the purpose aimed at was to broaden the working-classbasis of the Party. It is far from certain that this purpose wasattained.

In December 1925, at the Party’s Fourteenth Congress,some counsels of caution were drawn from the evolution of theParty’s membership since 1924. A resolution declared that

Congress rejects the policy leading to an excessive swelling ofthe Party’s ranks and its becoming filled with semi-proletarian


elements which have not been through the school of the tradeunions and of the proletarian organisations in general. Congressrejects such temptations, since they have nothing in commonwith Leninism and are a negation of the correct relationshipbetween the Party, which is the vanguard of the class, and theclass itself, and would make Communist leadership impossible.9

In practice this resolution had little effect on the actual re-cruitment policy followed. At the end of 1926 and, especially,in 1927 (with the campaign for the “October enrollment”) theParty again began quickly to increase its membership, so as toensure that 50 percent of the members were workers actuallyworking in industry.10 This target was reaffirmed in a resolu-tion of November 1928.11

(b) The working-class membership of theBolshevik Party

The changes in the numbers of factory workers, the quickturnover of this personnel, and the tendency for nonproletar-ian elements to pass themselves off as workers in order togain entry to the Party make the statistics for the number ofworkers who were Party members rather unreliable. This un-reliability is enhanced by the vague and fluctuating defini-tions of class which were used and by the inadequatechecking of applicants for membership.12

When analyzing statistics dealing with the social composi-tion of the Party it is also necessary to distinguish between“social position,” meaning the position a person had occupiedfor a more or less lengthy period before joining the Party, andhis actual occupation at a certain moment. This distinction isimportant, for a significant proportion of those who joined theParty as “workers” ceased to perform manual work and be-came office workers and officials.

By the criterion of “social position,” the number of workermembers of the Party increased from 212,000 in 1923 to1,100,000 in 1930. It thus increased five times faster than theincrease in total membership.13 From this standpoint therewas undoubtedly a broadening of the Party’s proletarian basis,


although a certain vagueness still prevailed as to the gen-uinely “working-class” character of some of the members.

Using the criterion of “actual occupation,” the relative in-crease in the number of workers was also very rapid—evenmore rapid since, after 1924-1925, a smaller proportion of theworker members became office workers.

(c) The Party’s social composition

However, the Party’s social composition was affected notonly by the influx of worker members but also by that ofelements from other sections of society, and by the transforma-tion of worker members into office workers. Looked at fromthis angle, the proletarian character of the Party’s social basis,while on the whole becoming stronger during the NEP, wasmarkedly less well defined than if one takes into account onlythe “social position” of the members.

In 1927, according to the census taken on January 10, theParty was made up as follows: 30 percent workers inindustry and transport, 1.5 percent agricultural workers, and8.4 percent peasants, while “office workers” and “others”represented 60.1 percent of the members.14

Thus, the numerically most important social group in theParty consisted of the office workers and “others.” In fact, thespecific weight of this group in the Party’s current activity wasmuch more considerable than is suggested by their mere per-centage. To this group belonged the cadres of the Party andthe administration, that is, those who held positions of author-ity and whose activity contributed largely to giving their truesignificance to the decisions of principle and guidelinesadopted by the Party’s leading organs. This was a new aspectof the process whereby the Party and the State acquired inde-pendence, a process that had begun earlier.15

Many discussions, and, especially, the purges to which theadministrative organs of the Party and the State had to besubjected (the chief posts in the state organs were filled bynomination of Party members to them16) show that the groupof members who were “office workers” (or officials) consisted


not only of revolutionary militants devoted to the cause ofsocialism but also of petty-bourgeois elements who were, asLenin put it, “hostile to all that is proletarian.” 17

The number of “scandals” which gave rise to investigationsand sanctions shows that these were not merely isolated cases,but constituted a phenomenon of social significance. This wasconcretized in the presence within the Party of a socialstratum which led a life different from that of the workers inthe factories and the fields, arrogated privileges to itself, andwas unaware of the real problems faced by the masses. Thosewho belonged to this stratum were actually cut off from theworking class, even if they had come from it. They oftentended to form cliques whose members covered up for eachother—what are called in the USSR, “family circles.” At theParty’s Fifteenth Congress Stalin said:

Often we settle questions . . . by the family, domestic-circlemethod, so to speak. Ivan Ivanovich, a member of the top leader-ship of such and such an organisation, has, say, made a grossmistake and has messed things up. But Ivan Fyodorovich is reluc-tant to criticise him, to expose his mistakes and to correct them.He is reluctant to do so because he does not want to ‘makeenemies.’ . . . Today I shall let him, Ivan Fyodorovich, off;tomorrow he will let me, Ivan Ivanovich, off. . . . Is it notobvious that we shall cease to be proletarian revolutionaries, andthat we shall certainly perish if we fail to eradicate from ourmidst this philistinism, this family-circle method of settlinghighly important questions of our work of construction?18

Thus, mainly among the office-worker members of theParty (a group including a high proportion of the cadres),contradictory social forces developed. On the one hand werethose who identified themselves with the proletariat, consti-tuted as a ruling class becoming master of its conditions ofexistence. On the other were those who, by the practices theydeveloped and by their relations with the means of produc-tion, formed a bourgeoisie and a petty bourgeoisie in theprocess of becoming. That bourgeois and petty-bourgeois so-cial forces should exist, and be present in the Party, is inevita-ble in the transition to socialism: it corresponds to the con-


tradictory nature of the social relations characteristic of thatperiod. It is just this that makes indispensable continued classstruggle, the development of the workers’ initiatives, socialistdemocracy, and strengthening the Party’s implantation in theproletariat and among the poor peasantry and the less well-offstrata of the middle peasantry.

During the NEP such reinforcement of what constituted thefirmest foundation of the Party hardly occurred at all, as maybe seen from the fact that in 1927 only 30 percent of the Partymembers were actually workers in industry and transport.Hence the effort constantly being made to increase recruit-ment from the working class, and hence the target defined forthis recruitment, that at least 50 percent of the Party member-ship be actual workers. In fact, this target was not attained.19

The difficulties encountered in broadening the Party’s pro-letarian base bring us to the problem of the Party’s concreterelations with the working class.

(d) The Party’s relations with the workingclass

With the information at present available, and keepingwithin the limits of the problems dealt with in this volume, wecan give only partial indications here of what the BolshevikParty’s relations were with the working class. Some of theseindications are of a “statistical” order, and so possess an ap-pearance of precision, while others are qualitative, whichinevitably means that there is room for a wide margin of in-terpretation. There is another reason, too, why these indica-tions are very approximate, namely, that relations between theworking class and the Bolshevik Party varied considerablyfrom one region or town to another, and from one period toanother: consequently it is dangerous to generalize, or to ex-tend to every year and the whole country what may seem truefor a particular moment or in a particular locality.

One thing is certain: the social mass basis of the BolshevikParty and the Soviet state was the proletariat. Without theactive support given to the Bolshevik Party and the Sovietgovernment by the live forces of the proletariat by its advance


elements and the larger part of its intermediate elements, itwould not have been possible to consolidate the changesmade by the Revolution, or to bring about the extremely rapidrecovery that the Soviet economy experienced under theNEP.

This support does not, of course, imply that the Soviet work-ing class as a whole was constantly in complete agreementwith all the decisions taken by the Party and the government.Such unanimity would have been incompatible with the con-tradictions that existed in the working class itself; the more sobecause at different times (and, in particular, on the morrow ofthe civil war) this class contained many elements of petty-bourgeois origin who were not proletarianized ideologically,and who had an attitude that was either passive or hostiletoward the Soviet government and the Party. Moreover, evenamong the genuinely proletarian elements, hesitation or dis-content was expressed at certain moments. During the NEPperiod such phenomena seem to have been connected mainlywith the reappearance of private capitalists and merchants andthe strengthening of the influence of the kulaks. But they werealso connected, especially in the second part of the NEP period, with the appearance of persons in leading positions (inparticular, in the enterprises) who developed authoritarianrelations with the workers and sought to smother their criti-cism. The way the production conferences were conducted20

illustrates this aspect of the matter.The consolidation of relations of trust between the Party and

the working class is determined by the correctness of theParty’s political line and by the way in which this is actuallyapplied. It depends on the concrete actions stimulated by theParty and by the direct presence of the Party in the workingclass—hence the importance of the increase in the workermembership of the Bolshevik Party.

At the Fourteenth Party Congress, in 1925, Stalin said thatthe proportion of workers who were members of the Party was8 percent, as compared with 7 percent at the time of theThirteenth Congress.21 In 1927 the corresponding figure wasestimated at a little under 8 percent.22


Altogether, from 1925 on, the increase in the working-classmembership of the Party had difficulty in keeping ahead ofthe rate of growth of the total number of workers: hence thestabilization at around 8 percent of the proportion of the work-ing class who were Party members. However, the “presence”of the Party among the workers varied a great deal as betweenindustries. In the principal industries it averaged out at 10.5percent, with a maximum figure of 13.5 percent in the oilindustry and a minimum figure of 6.2 percent in the textileindustry,23 which was largely staffed by women.24

The percentage of Party members was higher in the indus-tries where skilled workers were employed than in thosewhere the work force consisted of unskilled workers. Observ-able also are big geographical variations: the percentage ofParty members in the working class was very high—19 per-cent, in Leningrad, as against only 9 percent in Moscow andmuch lower percentages in most of the other cities.

These figures show why the campaigns aimed at ensuringthat 50 percent of the Party’s membership was made up ofactual workers did not succeed. Two reasons were of majorimportance here. First, the speed with which the number of“office workers” who were members of the Party increased:there were more “office workers” than “workers” in the Party,though the total number of office workers in the population,which was 3.5 million in 1926–1927, was smaller than thenumber of manual workers (4.6 million). Second, the fact that,despite the efforts made by the Party organizers, most workershesitated to join the Party. From this resulted the develop-ment of practices, condemned by the Party leadership, such as“collective adhesions”—which were followed, moreover, inthe months succeeding the campaigns that produced these“adhesions,” by a considerable number of the new membersdropping out.25

The unwillingness of many workers to join the Party seemsto have been due mainly to the fact that the bulk of theworkers who had entered industry only recently, and had notradition of organization, did not feel ready to take on theresponsibilities of Party membership. In particular, they were


not inclined to add to their production tasks those tasks inc-umbent on Party activists,26 which they were often calledupon to do. We know that in this period such a combination oftasks frequently amounted to a heavy burden which told se-riously upon the health of many activists, who suffered fromtuberculosis, anemia, or nervous disorders.27

The workers’ reluctance to respond more positively to therecruitment campaigns was due, also, to yet another factor,especially during the second half of the NEP period. It fre-quently arose from the fact that the members of the Party’sbasic organizations were assigned mainly executive tasks, andplayed only a very minor role in the forming of decisions, notonly as regards general problems but even where local affairswere concerned.

The results of an investigation made in 1928 showed thatone of the reasons often mentioned by workers to explain theirfailure to join the Party was that they had the impression thatits basic organizations—the ones about which, as workers,they had first-hand knowledge—were incapable of combatingthe defects in economic work and in the work of the sovietsand other organs, or of defending the immediate interests ofthe workers. On the last point, especially, they noticed that therepresentatives of the Party apparatus who attended produc-tion conferences rarely supported proposals put forward bythe workers: this was one aspect of the defective functioningof socialist democracy. They also noticed that relations be-tween the local Party cadres and the workers were bad, withthe workers sometimes accusing these cadres of profiting bytheir position to acquire various personal advantages.28

Reluctance to join the Party must not be confused withhostility to it as the organ leading the dictatorship of theproletariat—as may be seen by the positive reaction generallyforthcoming from the workers to the Party’s slogans, and thefact that many of them were prepared to give active support toits initiatives, even though they would not join it. Thus, onlyabout 30 percent of worker “activists” were members of theParty, 29 and these activists were even sometimes called“non-Party Communists.” 30


It is therefore necessary to distinguish between the mem-bership of the Party and the support given to it, includingactive support, for this did not necessarily imply a decision tobecome a Party member.

(e) The Party’s relations with thebourgeoisie

The proletarian character of the Bolshevik Party does notmean that it was “guaranteed” against penetration bybourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements. On the contrary, aswe have seen, such penetration was inevitable. Already in1922 Lenin had pointed out that, as “the ruling party,” theBolshevik Party was subjected to a constant threat of infiltra-tion by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements.31 If such in-filtration developed, it would affect the Party’s relations withthe masses, its practices, its political line, and its ideology. Itmight even result in the Party losing its proletarian characterand becoming a bourgeois Party—changing, in fact, into itsopposite.32

The Party was thus the battlefield of a struggle between theproletariat and the bourgeoise, of a struggle in which whatwas at stake was the class character of the Party and thegovernment.

The presence in the Party of the bourgeoisie or its represen-tatives assumed a variety of forms, corresponding to the de-fense of interests which were to some extent contradictory.Thus, during the NEP period, the interests of the kulaks andthe Nepmen—that is, of the private bourgeoisie—found moreor less conscious defenders in the Party, for defense of theseinterests could be presented as defense of a political linefavorable to “faster” development of production, especiallyagricultural production. But defense of the interests of thebourgeoisie might also show another face. It might take theform of struggle to “strengthen” the state sector and for“sound management” of this sector. This was the reason givenfor demanding that greater power be granted to the expertsand technicians and also to the heads of state enterprise, with


subordination of the immediate producers to the orders of thespecialists, and so on. This form of struggle tended objectivelytoward the constituting and strengthening of a statebourgeoisie who had the means of production at their sover-eign disposal, and decided what use was to be made of theaccumulation fund. This form of struggle was developing al-ready in the NEP period, but it was with the 1930s—when theprivate bourgeoisie had been practically eliminated—that itacquired decisive importance.

II. The broadening of the mass basis of thetrade unions and the acquisition ofindependence by the trade-unionapparatuses

Unlike the Party, which organized the vanguard of the pro-letariat, the trade unions were mass organizations, and so theirmembership was much larger. During 1926 the Soviet tradeunions had some 9,300,000 members, and in mid-1928 morethan 11,000,000 which meant about 80 percent of all wageearners.33

The trade unions were organized in accordance withbranches of activity. They could recruit not only the workersin a given branch, but also the technical personnel and theoffice workers. About one-third of the trade-union memberswere nonmanual workers.34 It was not compulsory to join aunion, and those members who did not pay their dues regu-larly were expelled. The high proportion of trade-union mem-bership testifies to the workers’ attachment to this form oforganization. Nevertheless, being a member of a union didbring various material advantages (because the unions were incharge of certain social services, and because they tended togive priority to the defense of their members’ interests) so thatit would be wrong to see the high level of unionization as asign of mass approval by the workers for all aspects of theactivity of their trade unions.


However, direct influence by the rank and file on trade-union activity was relatively limited, for the trade-unioncadres formed an apparatus the composition of which was notdirectly controlled by the mass of the workers. The practice ofappointment from above to responsible posts prevailed. It ledto the consolidation of a body of trade-union officials whooften had been remote from manual work for a long time.35

This was an aspect of the process whereby the instruments ofthe dictatorship of the proletariat acquired independence—aprocess which had begun before the coming of the NEP.36

The role played by the trade unions was twofold. On the onehand, they defended the immediate interests of the workers.On the other, they were an agency of proletarian education:they helped to bring the ideas of socialism into the workingclass and to support the policy of the Bolshevik Party. Thisdual role, defined by the Party at the close of the “trade-uniondiscussion” in the winter of 1920–1921,37 was regularlyreaffirmed by the Party and by the unions. However, emphasiswas placed differently at different times upon one or the otherof these roles, and their concrete significance might vary.

In general, it can be said that during the first phase of theNEP, emphasis was fairly widely placed on the unions’ role asdefenders of the workers’ immediate interests, especiallywhen the collective labor agreements were being concludedeach year. From 1925–1926 on, when the drive for indus-trialization was developing, emphasis fell more and moreupon the educative role of the trade unions—and this wasinterpreted as meaning, above all, that they must give directbacking to increasing production and fulfilling the economicplan.

The reduced emphasis on the unions’ role as defenders ofthe workers’ immediate interests corresponded to explicitpolitical orientations, which were expressed first by theVSNKh and its press (especially the TPG) and then supportedmore and more by the Party and the Komsomol, in connectionwith the demands of rapid growth of industrial production.The gradual transition to centralized fixing of wages and worknorms also restricted the field in which the unions could


operate directly at enterprise level. Along with this there wasa fall in the number of workers involved in disputes betweenunions and managements—from 3,212,300 in 1925–1926 to2,463,000 in 1926–1927 and 1,874,300 in 1927–1928.38 Therelative fall was, of course, much greater, since the number ofwage earners increased rapidly during those years. It wasclearly connected with a less demanding attitude on the partof the unions, for those years saw frequent increases in worknorms, which provoked demonstrations of discontent on thepart of the rank and file of the workers. Disputes betweenunions and managements were settled by the mediation of anumber of organs: the chief of these organs, the commissionfor settling disputes, RKK, dealt in 1928 with 84.9 percent ofthe disputes arising. If they were not settled at this level,disputes were referred to a conciliation board, and then, ifneed be, to an arbitration tribunal. These organs were respon-sible in 1928 for settling 20 percent and 80 percent, respec-tively, of the disputes not settled at the lower level.39

After 1926 the number of strikes (or, at least, of officiallyrecognized strikes) declined markedly. At the Eighth Con-gress of the Trade Unions (December 1928) it was mentionedthat in 1926, 43,200 workers had participated in strikes (32,900of these being in state-owned enterprises). The number hadfallen in 1927 to 25,400 (of whom 20,000 were in state-ownedenterprises) and to 9,700 (of whom 8,900 were in state-ownedenterprises) during the first half of 1928. Only about 2 percentof these strikes had taken place with the agreement of theunions40—the rest broke out “spontaneously” and withoutunion approval. In January 1927 a secret directive from thechairman of the Central Committee of the Woodworkers’Union specified that “the strike must be sanctioned be-forehand by the Central Committee of the Trade Union, withut which the calling of a strike is categorically forbidden.” 41

This circular noted that “the most important task of the tradeunion organs is to take preparatory measures in time in orderto prevent a strike movement in state enterprises.”

Strikes did not disappear altogether, but they became ex-


ceptional, and were hardly mentioned anymore in the news-papers. Generally speaking, the trade unions succeeded inconforming to the task indicated in the circular quoted above.They were helped in this by the enthusiasm for productionwhich, at the start of the Five-Year Plan, took possession of alarge section of the working class; but also by the repressionapplied to persons responsible for forbidden strikes. Whenthere were serious reasons for discontent, this expressed itselfin either “unofficial strikes” (rarely) or “go-slows” or in-creased absenteeism (more often).

However, the trade-union leadership which was in office during most of the NEP period, and which was headed byTomsky, put up a certain amount of resistance to the demandpresented to it by the leaders of industry, to play a more activerole in raising the productivity of labor and combating absen-teeism, together with various forms of indiscipline.42

Eventually this resistance was denounced by the Party. OnApril 23, 1929, the CC accused Tomsky (together with the twoother leaders of the “Right” in the Party) of cherishing“trade-unionist” tendencies consisting of giving priority topromotion of the workers’ immediate demands over the tasksof economic construction.43 A little more than a month-later,on May 29, 1929, the Central Trades Union Council relievedTomsky of his post as chairman and appointed Shvernik secre-tary of the trade unions.44 Thereafter, it was officially declaredthat the primary task of the unions was to fight for fulfillmentof the targets of industrialization.45

Thus, the former trade-union leadership’s refusal to acceptthe demands imposed upon the workers by the policy of rapidindustrialization led to great changes in the makeup of thetrade-union apparatus. These changes were carried out “fromabove,” without consultation with the rank and file. Thismethod brought serious contradictions with it. Nevertheless,for the moment, it entailed no obvious negative consequences,for, as a whole, the workers were convinced that rapid indus-trialization was needed, in order to put an end as soon aspossible to unemployment, to provide a firm foundation for


socialism, and to improve the standard of living. Many of themwere therefore ready to let the leadership of the trade unionsbe taken over by the supporters of a productionist line.

III. The working class and the activity ofthe soviets

One of the slogans of the October Revolution had been: “Allpower to the soviets!” In a formal sense, this slogan wasrealized during the October days; but very soon, with thecoming of the civil war, this became true, in the main, for thecentral soviet organs only, whereas the activity of the localones was greatly reduced. At the end of the civil war, at themoment when the Kronstadt rebels took as their slogans,“Soviets without Communists!” and then at the very begin-ning of the NEP, the activity of the Soviet organs was essen-tially concentrated in the leading organs of the soviets of therepublics.46

The conditions under which the soviets were operating atthe end of the NEP resulted from the efforts made to “revital-ize” them,47 starting from the situation just described, andfrom the obstacles encountered by these efforts. The suc-cesses obtained were uneven, being more definite in the caseof the soviets at the top of the pyramid than in that of thesoviets at the bottom, the ones which, in principle, shouldhave been most directly linked with the masses.

It is necessary, indeed, to recall that the organization ofSoviet power was pyramidal in structure. At the base of thepyramid were the local soviets. The deputies to these localsoviets were chosen by direct vote of the majority of theelectors in each constituency. The voters were presented withlists drawn up by the Party after consultation (in principle)with meetings of non-Party people. These lists did not consistof only Party members: the policy of “revitalizing” the sovietseven called for a broad appeal to candidates who were notmembers of the Party. The deputies elected to the local


soviets then elected deputies to the higher-level soviets (thoseof subdistricts, districts, and so on, up to the soviets of eachrepublic and of the USSR as a whole, this last having some2,000 members).

Most power was held by the soviet of the USSR. In the NEPperiod, this soviet met twice yearly. Between these meetings,its executive committee (the VTsIK) met three or four times.“Permanent” power, however, was vested in the Presidium ofthe VTsIK. The soviets of the republics, regions, districts, andsubdistricts worked in more or less the same way as that of theUSSR. The powers of these soviets were smaller, but they, too,were concentrated in the hands of executive committees, orrather, in those of the presidiums of these executive commit-tees.

In practice these soviets were assemblies to which theirexecutive committees and the governments (where the sovietsof the USSR and of the Union Republics were concerned)reported on their activities, receiving the comments and criti-cisms of the deputies.

In 1929 members of working-class origin did not quite con-stitute the majority in the VTsIK of the USSR,48 but they didin the VTsIK of the RSFSR (52 percent) and in the urbansoviets (53.4 percent). 49 However, we must distinguish be-tween those who were merely of working-class origin andthose who were still actually workers. When this distinction ismade, we find that the proportion represented by those whowere actually workers was markedly less. Thus, an inquirymade in 1928 into a sample of urban soviets in the RSFSRshowed that, while 47 percent of the deputies were workersby social origin, only 37.9 percent were still working in pro-duction.50

In principle, the most direct action affecting everyday con-ditions of existence (outside workplaces, at any rate) was exer-cisable by the basic soviets—where the working class wasconcerned, by the urban soviets.

In fact, already at the end of the NEP period, and despitethe decisions taken from July 1926 on,51 these urban sovietsdid not always even exist. It was only on February 8, 1928, that


a decree of the VTsIK of the Soviet Union called upon theExecutive Committees of the republics to establish soviets inall towns of 100,000 inhabitants and upward, and to endowthem with real powers, together with a minimum of financialresources.52 In spite of this decree, relations between theurban soviets and the soviets of the subdistricts and districtscontinued to be strained, because the latter kept up theirtutelage over the former. The urban soviets were not allowedto elect executive committees: they had only a presidium,whose activity was subject to supervision by the ExecutiveCommittee of the next-higher soviet.

Despite the obstacles put in the way of their developmentby the higher level administrations, whenever urban sovietscame into being they showed remarkable vitality and gaveopportunities to tens of thousands of workers to take partin the management of local affairs.53 Yet, regardless ofthe decisions of principle taken by the Party, these urbansoviets remained very poor in material and financial re-sources.

This situation is instructive, for it shows what a struggle waswaged by the members of the higher apparatuses to keep holdof as much power and authority as possible, a struggle thatcaused them frequently to obstruct orientations given out bythe central bodies of the Bolshevik Party. One of the matters atstake in this struggle was the control to be exercised overday-to-day conditions of existence either by deputies wholargely came directly from the working class and still lived inthe midst of that class, or by a body of functionaries who,although generally members of the Party54 had become ad-ministrators, separated from production and tending to form anindependent group that escaped from direct control by theworking masses.

The outcome of this struggle, which was one of the aspectsof the struggle for Soviet democracy, was not determinedmerely by the “decisions” of principle taken by the leadingorgans of the Party regarding the “division of competences”between the different organs which together made up thestructure of soviet power. The struggle was decided by the


overall process of the class struggles. It was decided, in thelast analysis, by the expansion or the decline of the role playedby the direct producers in the production units themselves. Itwas overdetermined by the Party’s general political line, andin particular by the place that this line accorded to rank-and-file initiative or to centralized decision-making. And, towardthe end of the NEP period, the turn that had been madetoward giving priority to modern large-scale industry, and tomaximum accumulation, created conditions that were less andless favorable to strengthening the role of the basic soviets.The problem of the forms of participation by the working classin the soviets cannot therefore, in the end, be considered inisolation from the struggles that went on within the BolshevikParty, struggles through which the Party’s political line be-came defined and transformed.

Notes

1. The question of the peasantry’s relations with the Party will betouched on only briefly here, since it has been examined earlier(See above, pp. 163 ff.).

2. T. H. Rigby, Communist Party Membership, p. 53. These areround figures. The source quoted by Rigby is Partiinaya Zhizn,no. 19 (October 1967), pp. 8-10. Generally speaking, thesefigures are based on reports sent up from the basic units. Theyare usually a little higher than those obtained from the censusesof Party membership which were carried out from time to time.There were other official estimates, but the differences are not, as

3. There were two of these, in 1924 and in 1925.4.

embrace both full members and “candidates,” who had toundergo a period of probation.

5. Lenin, CW, vol. 33, p. 229.6. Ibid., vol. 33, p. 256.7. Ibid., vol. 33, p. 257.8. Ibid., vol. 33, p. 258.9. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 81.

Rigby, Communist Party Membership, p. 52. All these figures

a rule, very large (see ibid. p. 54).


10. Molotov’s report and the CC’s decision at the end of 1926 (Izves-tiya Ts.K., nos. 47–48 [December 2, 1926], quoted in Rigby,Communist Party Membership, p. 165), and the resolution ofOctober 19, 1927, “on the regulation of the growth of the Party inconnexion with the Party census” Izvestiya Ts.K., no. 39 [Oc-tober 22, 1927]; and Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. II, p.110).

11. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 545–547.12. In August 1925 a circular signed by Molotov, as secretary of the

CC, noted that the inadequacy of the definitions used made itimpossible to regulate the social composition of the Party. Thiscircular laid down the principles that were thereafter to be ob-served in social classification. It brought some clarity into thestatistics, but allowed a degree of vagueness still to prevail,especially as regards the checking of statements made by appli-cants for membership. The circular distinguished between“workers,” mainly employed as wage earners performing manuallabor in production, transport, and agriculture: “peasants,” work-ing independently or in a family or collective enterprise in thesphere of agriculture (or stockbreeding, fishing, etc.); and “officeworkers,” working in the apparatuses of administration, theeconomy, cultural activity, etc. The classification included aheading “others,” to cover students, individual craftsmen, etc.(Izvestiya Ts.K., no. 34 [September 7, 1925], summarized inRigby, Communist Party Membership, pp. 159–160).

13. Figures calculated from the total membership and the percent-ages of class composition, according to Rigby, Communist PartyMembership, pp. 52, 116.

14. Ibid., p. 162. It will be noted that the current figures based onreports from basic units showed a higher percentage of workers(and of peasants) than the census, which was regarded as moreprecise. According to the current figures, the proportion of mem-bers who were workers in industry and transport was 36.8percent—22.6 percent more than was shown in the census.

15. See volume I of the present work, pp. 307 ff. and 408 ff.16. The practice of nomination, and no longer of election (which

often continued in a purely “theoretical” way) to very importantpositions in the Party and the administration came in gradually.It may be regarded as having become consolidated by 1926,when it was in the hands of one of the Party’s administrativeorgans, the Orgraspred—in principle under the supervision of


the CC, but in practice controlled by the Secretariat. The Org-raspred was the organ which in 1924 replaced the Uchraspred.A list of posts which were to be filled only by the Orgraspred, orwith its consent, was drawn up: this was what was called thenomenklatura. (The files on Party members who were eligible tofill posts listed in the nomenklatura were held by the Org-raspred, and the list of these persons is also sometimes referredto as the nomenklatura.) Included were posts which in theorywere supposed to be filled by election (see Carr, Socialism, vol. 2,pp. 203-212, and Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, p. 122).

17. See above, p. 333. The Quotation from Lenin, CW, vol. 33, p. 256.18. Stalin, Works, vol. 10. pp. 338-–339.19. Rigby, Communist Party Membership, p. 116.20. See above, pp. 217–234.21. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, pp. 353–354.22. Rigby, Communist Party Membership, pp. 52, 163 (census

figures).23. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, p. 108, quoting Sotsialny i

Natsionalny Sostav VKP(b) (1928), p. 51.24. In 1927, only 10.5 percent of Party members were women (Carr

and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, p. 103).25. Ibid. p. 114, n. 1.26. The Party activists ran the Party cells, held meetings for discus-

sion and explanation, and took on responsibilities in the commis-sions of the soviets (in the cooperative and cultural organiza-tions), and so on—all of which might add up to a considerablenumber of hours over and above their day’s work in the factory.The activists were not Party “functionaries” but continued to gettheir living by working in production. As a rule, those workerswho became Party functionaries, or who were appointed to postsof administrative responsibility, were recruited from among theactivists.

27. Rigby, Communist Party Membership, pp. 117–118.28. See Izvestiya Ts.K., October 31, 1928, pp. 2–3, quoted in Carr

and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, pp. 112–113.29. Rigby, Communist Party Membership, p. 166.30. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, p. 128, quoting Pravda,

February 20, 1927.31. See above, p. 333.32. See volume I of the present book, pp. 296 ff.33. VII-oy Syezd Professionalnykh Soyuzov SSSR (1929), p. 57.


34. Ibid., p. 77.35. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 2, [p.] 547.36. See volume I of the present work, pp. 408 ff.

38. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 563.39. Ibid., p. 565.40. Professionalnye Soyuzy SSSR, 1926-1928: Otchet k VIII Syezdu

(1928), pp. 358–360.41. Fainsod, Smolensk, p. 318.42. See, for example, Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta, September

7 and 12, 1928, quoted in Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt.2, p. 554.

43. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 429–447.44. On these questions see also p. 236 above and pp. 453 ff. below.45. Trud, June 2, 1929; and Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt.

2, pp. 562-563.46. See volume I of the present work, pp. 255 ff., 294 ff., 333 ff., and

447 ff.47. The slogan of “revitalizing” the soviets applied mainly to the

local soviets, whose activity had in many cases become purelyformal. The slogan was put forward insistently from October

the subject of decisions by the TsIK of the RSFSR in the form ofdecrees, corresponding decrees being issued in the other repub-lics of the Soviet Union. The CC meeting of October 25, 1924,treated the question as one of great importance, focusing itsattention upon the problems of the rural areas (see KPSS, vol. 1,pp. 906 ff.). The same problems were the subject of discussionsand decisions in January and April 1925. In July 1926 the Partyput the emphasis on reactivating the urban soviets. The questionwas taken up again in January, April, and July 1927, and thenagain in February 1928 and January 1929 (Carr and Davies,Foundations, vol. 2, pp. 264–266). The need to keep coming backto the question of reactivating the soviets, and the discussions towhich this question gave rise, show the strength of the resistanceencountered by any attempt on the part of the local soviets to takeeffective charge of the matters that concerned them (See above,pp. 167 ff.).

48. Their percentage was 46.5, as against 20.8 percent for membersof peasant origin and 32.7 percent for the “other” socialcategories, which meant mostly “office workers” (BolshayaSovyetskaya Entsiklopediya, 1st ed., vol. 11, p. 542).

1924 on. After being featured by Pravda on October 11th, it was

37. See volume I of the present work, pp. 289 [sic-m2m-pp. 384] ff.


49.50. Izvestiya, May 23, 1928, quoted in Carr and Davies, Founda-

tions, vol. 2, p. 264, n. 2.51.52. Sobranie Zakonov, no. 10 (1928), arts. 86, 87.53. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, pp. 268 ff., especially p.

269, n. 1.54. In general, in 1929 at least 70 percent of members of Executive

Committees were Party members. The percentage of Partymembers in the urban soviets in the same year was 46.1 percent(Bolshaya Sovyetskaya Entsiklopediya, 1st ed., vol. 11, p. 542).

See above, p. 352, n. 2 [sic–m2m] n. 47.

Ibid., p. 542.

355

Part 4The changes in ideological and politicalrelations within the Bolshevik Party

Under the conditions of the NEP the leadership of theBolshevik Party (its congresses and conferences, and, stillmore, the Central Committee, the Political Bureau, and theParty Secretariat) formed the chief foreground of politics, withthe government and the VTsIK only secondary. This waswhere, through a series of conflicts, there took place, in acomparatively open way, the process of working out the politi-cal line to be followed and the conceptions on which that linewas based.

I have spoken here of a “foreground” so as to emphasize thefact that, in reality, the political line was not worked out “in aest tube,” inside some “sovereign” political ruling group.Social conflicts, whether organized or not, actually had theireffect, direct or indirect, upon the analyses made by the Partyand upon the process whereby it decided its line. The Party(or its leadership) was not a “demiurge” placed somewhere“above” all contradictions and acting somehow “from with-out” upon these contradictions.

The tasks that the Bolshevik Party undertook were deter-mined by the existence of objective contradictions. However,the way these tasks were precisely defined, and the means thatwere adopted to fulfill them, resulted from the fashion inwhich these contradictions were identified by the Party, thetype of analysis to which they were subjected, the resourcesactually available for action upon them, and the estimate madeof the possibility of taking action with these resources.

The analyses which the Party developed, and the conclu-sions to which they pointed, were dependent, therefore, notonly on the objective situation but also on the ideological


forms through which the struggles fought out inside the Partywere conducted. The aggregate of these forms constitutedwhat may be called the Bolshevik ideological formation. Itwas a result of history, produced by systematization of theParty’s experience and, more broadly, of the experience of theinternational labor movement, a systematization effected byapplying the concepts of Marxism and Leninism, along withnotions regarded as being compatible with these concepts.Like everything else, the Bolshevik ideological formation con-tained contradictions of its own, and it changed during theNEP period in consequence of the class struggles and of “ex-perience gained”—meaning the Party’s interpretation of thesuccesses and failures of the political line followed up to thatpoint.

The actual political line was never identical with that whichwas laid down in principle. The more or less extensive gapbetween the two, which tended to widen toward the end ofthe NEP, was determined by many different factors, and inparticular by the greater or lesser correctness of the conclu-sions drawn from analysis of the contradictions and of theevaluation made of the means that could be employed to dealcorrectly with them. The gap between the actual political lineand the line of principle depended also on the support oropposition that the various class forces—and the apparatusesthrough which they operated—offered to the line as it wasdefined in principle.

Through the struggles which occurred in this Party duringthe NEP period we can see how the position of certain leaderswas strengthened, whereas the authority of those who de-fended conceptions that were rejected by the Party’s leadingbodies suffered decline. This process became especially acutetoward the end of the NEP period, when, in contrast to whathad happened in Lenin’s time, leaders whose ideas wererejected found themselves, more and more often, removedfrom the Party leadership and even expelled from the Party,which meant a narrowing of inner-Party democracy. Theworking of democratic centralism demands that a variety ofopinions be expressed and that Party members be allowed to


engage in a genuine debate. In this way the form in whichideological and political struggles were carried on in the Partywas altered.

The problems which the Party had to confront on the eve ofthe “great change” were both many and complicated. Basi-cally, they were the same problems as those the Party hadbeen faced with in 1923–1924 (on this, see volume I of thepresent work, pp. 506 ff.), but the terms in which they werepresented were partly different.

The decisive problem was, and remained all through theseyears, how to unite the masses of the people so as to developtheir active support for the Soviet government. At the heart ofthis problem lay the task of consolidating the worker-peasantalliance.

On the fulfillment of this task depended the possibility ofradically transforming some of the existing social relations,and this transformation was also constantly on the agendaduring the NEP period. It concerned, first and foremost, polit-ical relations, for what was required was to destroy the stateapparatus inherited from Tsardom, to revive the soviets, and todevelop democratic centralism, which could not be donewithout developing mass democracy. The problem of a radicaltransformation also existed at the level of the immediate pro-duction relations: what was required was, in particular, tochange labor relations in the state-owned enterprises. Thesolution of such a problem as this was dependent on theParty’s capacity to stimulate real mass actions.

The industrialization of the country and the transformationof its agriculture were problems that were present throughoutthe NEP period, more or less acutely, but the type of indus-trialization and of change in agriculture that took place wasdictated by the nature of the changes in the immediate pro-duction relations, in political relations, and in relations be-tween classes.

All these problems came up, with greater or lesser clarity atdifferent times, during the discussions that went on in theParty during this period. However, the solutions that the Partytried to apply varied from time to time, partly because these


problems arose in terms that were to some extent new, andpartly because the analysis made of them changed, in connec-tion with the changes undergone by the Bolshevik ideologicalformation.

When one considers the years 1924 to 1929 as a whole, oneis struck by the fact that the Party never clearly defined whatthe chief link in the situation was, the link on which actionmust be taken first and foremost so as to be able to wieldsufficient power over the whole set of contradictions. Never-theless, it can be said that between 1924 and 1927 the deci-sions taken by the Party’s leading bodies were more or lessconsistently dominated by the problem of maintaining theworker-peasant alliance. It was on this problem that the Par-ty’s efforts were mainly concentrated, even though it did notalways deal correctly with it and was unsuccessful in arousinga mass movement among the peasantry.

The worker-peasant alliance was, indeed, the chief link atthat time, the factor on which action needed to be taken firstand foremost in order to strengthen the dictatorship of theproletariat. The various oppositions which took shape withinthe Party between 1924 and 1927 all overlooked or neglectedthis chief link. Even when some of their formulations werecorrect (especially when they demanded that disputed ques-tions be discussed more openly and thoroughly, and thatgenuine democratic centralism be developed), the generalorientation of the political line they advocated was mistaken,because it neglected the main thing—what was needed inorder to strengthen the worker-peasant alliance.

From 1928 on (and even earlier, if certain practical deci-sions are taken into account), however, the Party tended nolonger to focus its efforts mainly on the worker-peasant al-liance, although this was far from having been consolidated,and its consolidation continued to be the principal problem.The Bolshevik Party then acted increasingly as though indus-trialization of the country was the sine qua non for solving allother problems. In this way the conditions accumulated whichdictated the “great change” at the end of 1929. The “Right”opposition tried to prevent this turn, for which neither the


Party nor the peasantry were really prepared. But it was inca-pable of formulating a political line that could have preventedthe kulaks from gathering around them an increasing numberof middle peasants. It was therefore doomed to defeat whenthe Party launched itself along the road of a collectivizationand an industrialization which it could not control.

In order to get a better grasp of the ideological and politicalchanges that led to the “great change,” we need to examinethe conditions under which the struggle for the worker-peasant alliance, and then for industrialization, was wagedwithin the Party. This is the indispensable starting point for ananalysis of the essential features of the Bolshevik ideologicalformation and of the process of change that it underwent.

361

1. The fight for the worker-peasantalliance

When we study the period between the Twelfth and Fif-teenth Party Congresses (from 1923 to the end of 1927), we seethat, for the Party leadership, the chief political task was, inprinciple, the strengthening of the worker-peasant alliance.This was so even if the primacy of the task was not alwaysmade clearly explicit and the concrete conditions for realizingit often remained vague, both on the plane of formulationsand, even more, on that of political and economic practice. Inany case, it was around this problem that the sharpest conflictswere fought against the chief opposition trends. These strug-gles, and the way they unfolded, are of major importance asregards the ideological and political changes that occurred(especially in respect to organizational practice), and so wemust briefly recall how they developed between 1924 and1927, taking as our chronological “reference points” the chiefmeetings held by the Party’s leading bodies.

I. From the Twelfth to the ThirteenthParty Congress

During the period separating the Twelfth Congress from theThirteenth, which was held on May 23–31, 1924, a little morethan four months after Lenin’s death, political struggles werewaged around problems of the worker-peasant alliance and ofinner-Party democracy. They gave rise to a number of dis-cussions and decisions of which we can only summarize herethe most important aspects.

The Thirteenth Congress resolved that, “in order to solve


the problem of the Party’s work in the countryside, it is neces-sary to start from the principle that the task for the whole of thishistorical period is to realize the alliance between the workingclass and the peasantry.” 1 The resolutions devoted to work inthe rural areas and to cooperation2 show the importance ac-corded by the Congress to the worker-peasant alliance and tothe efforts being made to decide how to develop this allianceso as to lead the peasantry “to socialism through co-opera-tion.” 3 These resolutions also show the difficulties encoun-tered by the progress of Party activity in the countryside, andreveal a tendency to rely upon, for the fulfillment of rural tasks,mainly the rural intelligentsia and those industrial workerswho had “links with the villages,” 4 rather than upon the peas-ants themselves. Moreover, in terms of day-to-day practice,the Party gave only minimal aid to the poor and middle peas-ants.

While, at the time of the Thirteenth Congress, the Partyseemed united on the need to strengthen the worker-peasantalliance, the divisions on this matter were actually as deep ason some others. In 1923–1924 opposition to the worker-peasant alliance was expressed mainly in the demands putforward to strengthen the role of Gosplan and to increasecredits to heavy industry (which, under the conditions of thetime, could be done only at the expense of agriculture andthe peasantry).

Open opposition to the economic policy followed by theParty between the Twelfth and Thirteenth Congresses wasshown when, on October 15, 1923, forty-six members of theCC sent a letter to the Political Bureau. This letter, which came to bespoken of as the “platform of the 46” was signed byPyatakov, Preobrazhensky, Osinsky, Kaganovich, and Sap-ronov.5 It attributed the economic difficulties encountered in1923 (especially the slump in sales of industrial goods experi-enced toward the end of the year) to shortcomings in creditpolicy, planning, and aid to industry.6

The “platform of the 46” declared that if economic difficul-ties had piled up in this way, it was not due to incapacity on thepart of the leadership but to the fact that the problems con-


cerned had not been widely discussed, discussion of thembeing confined to “Party functionaries recruited from above,”while the mass of the Party members were excluded. Theplatform therefore proceeded to deal in a severely critical waywith the way that the Party functioned:

This is a fact which is known to every member of the Party.Members of the Party who are dissatisfied with this or that deci-sion of the Central Committee, or even of a provincial commit-tee, who have this or that doubt in their minds, who privately note this or that error, irregularity or disorder, are afraid to speakabout it at Party meetings, and are even afraid to talk about it inconversation, unless the partner in the conversation isthoroughly reliable from the point of view of ‘discretion’; freediscussion within the Party has practically vanished, the publicopinion of the Party is stifled.7

Although Trotsky, who was a member of the PoliticalBureau, did not sign this platform, he was thought to share theviews expressed in it, on account of the letters he sent, aroundthis same time, to the other members of the PB, letters ofsimilar content.8

Thus, in the months preceding the Thirteenth Congress,great tension developed within the CC, centered on problemsof “economic policy” (and so, of the worker-peasant alliance)and of the Party’s internal regime.

On the first of these points the opposition suffered formaldefeat, as may be seen from the resolutions of the ThirteenthConference (January 16–18, 1924) and the Thirteenth Con-gress. On the second, matters were more complicated.

On the one hand, the Thirteenth Conference adopted aresolution on “building the Party” 9 which acknowledged thatthe situation called for a serious change in the Party’s orienta-tion, in the sense of effective and systematic application of theprinciples of “workers’ democracy.” The resolution specifiedthat “workers’ democracy means open discussion by all Partymembers of the most important questions . . . , freedom ofdiscussion within the Party, and also election from below ofleading functionaries and committees.” 10 In reality, the adop-


tion of this resolution did little to modify the authoritarianpractices which prevailed.

On the other hand, the Thirteenth Conference condemned,as factional activity, the “platform of the 46” and Trotsky’sstatements, thereby confirming a resolution passed by theplenum of the CC and the CCC at its meeting of October25–27, 1923.11

The Thirteenth Congress strengthened the positions ofthose who had declared for consolidating the worker-peasantalliance, especially Stalin, who was reelected to the post ofgeneral secretary, although he had offered his resignation afterLenin’s “Letter to the Congress” had been discussed by theCC and by the senior members of the Congress delegations.12

Trotsky’s position, on the contrary, was markedlyweakened, especially after the very severe criticism made ofhim by Zinoviev, who called upon him to admit his mistakespublicly. 13 Trotsky refused to do this, while saying that hebowed to the decisions taken, regardless of whether they wereright or wrong.14

Despite the overt appearance of divergencies in the PB, theThirteenth Congress seemed to be still dominated by a spiritof unity. The composition of the PB underwent little change:Trotsky continued to be a member, and Bukharin entered it,taking the place of Lenin, who died on January 21, 1924.

II. From the Thirteenth to the FourteenthParty Congress

After the Thirteenth Congress Trotsky’s position continuedto weaken. On November 6, 1924, he published a book enti-tled The Lessons of October, in which he leveled an attackspecifically at Kamenev and Zinoviev for their hesitancy at themoment of the October Revolution. This gave rise to a seriesof counterattacks on their part, the most important of which, atthe time, was the one launched by Kamenev in a speech onNovember 18.15 His chief criticism of Trotsky was his alleged“underestimation of the role of the peasantry, masked by revo-


lutionary phraseology.” 16 The Party gathering to whichKamenev had spoken passed a motion denouncing “Trotsky’sbreach of the promises he made at the Thirteenth Congress.”Similar resolutions were adopted at other Party meetings.17

On January 15, 1925, Trotsky sent a letter to the CC in whichhe said that he had not sought to reopen a discussion in theParty, and offered his resignation from the chairmanship of theRevolutionary Military Council.

(a) The condemnation of “Trotskyism”

On January 17 the plenum of the CC adopted a resolutioncondemning Trotsky for his attacks on the unity of the Party.It denounced Trotskyism as “a falsification of Communismin the spirit of adaptation to ‘European’ models of pseudo-Marxism, that is, in the last analysis, to the spirit of ‘Eu-ropean’ Social-Democracy.” Trotsky was relieved of his func-tions as chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council andwarned that any further violation of the Party’s decisionswould make his continued membership of the PB impossibleand put on the agenda the question of expelling him fromthe CC.18

During the discussions preceding the adoption of this reso-lution, Zinoviev had demanded that Trotsky be expelled fromthe Party, or at least removed from the CC. This demand wasrejected, and Kamenev then called for Trotsky’s removal fromthe PB. These demands were opposed by Stalin, Kalinin,Voroshilov, and Ordzhonikidze.19 At the Party’s FourteenthCongress Stalin mentioned these demands put forward byZinoviev and Kamenev, explaining that they had not beenaccepted because “we knew that the policy of amputation wasfraught with great dangers for the Party, that the method ofamputation, the method of blood-letting—and they demandedblood—was dangerous, infectious: today you amputate onelimb, tomorrow another, the day after tomorrow a third—whatwill we have left in the Party?” 20

These discussions were thus among the first occasions onwhich open dissension occurred between Stalin, on the onehand, and Zinoviev and Kamenev, on the other.


(b) The worker-peasant alliance and thebuilding of socialism in one country

The resolution of the plenum of January 1925 had beenpreceded by the publication of a series of articles criticizingTrotsky’s concept of “permanent revolution.” One of these,published by Stalin in Pravda and Izvestiya of December 20,1924, was to have considerable importance. It was entitled:“October and Comrade Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revo-lution.” In this article Stalin counterposed to Trotsky’s theoryhe thesis of building socialism in one country. The Four-teenth Party Conference (April 27–29, 1925) embodied thisthesis officially in one of the resolutions it adopted.21

In a report on the Fourteenth Conference which he gave inMay 1925 Stalin said that this resolution implied that thecommunity of interest between the workers and the peasantswas sufficiently strong to outweigh, under the dictatorship ofthe proletariat, the contradictions setting them against eachother: hence, it was possible for the socialist road to triumphin the USSR. It was just this possibility that Trotsky rejectedwhen he declared that “in a backward country” the contradic-tions between the working class and the peasantry could notbe resolved—that they could be resolved only on the interna-tional plane. Stalin quoted this passage from Trotsky: “Thecontradictions in the position of a workers’ government in abackward country with an overwhelmingly peasant popula-tion can be solved only on an international scale, in the arenaof the world proletarian revolution.” And Stalin added:“Needless to say, this proposition has nothing in common withLeninism.” 22

We thus see clearly that what was at issue in the conflictbetween Trotsky’s concept of “permanent revolution” andacceptance of the possibility of building socialism in one coun-try, not excluding a country with a peasant majority, was thefirmness of the worker-peasant alliance, and therefore, thesignificance of the NEP. Trotsky’s thesis reduced the NEP to ameasure dictated by circumstances, a “retreat” which mustresult in capitalism becoming stronger and stronger. Accord-ing to this thesis, in the conditions prevailing in Russia, the


only way to hold back the realization of this threat was toundertake rapid industrialization, and this could be carriedthrough only at the expense of the peasantry, for industry wastoo weak to have its own source of accumulation. This point ofview was developed systematically by Preobrazhensky, in hisconception of “primitive socialist accumulation.” 23

In Stalin’s report on the Fourteenth Conference he showedthat the conference had rejected this view and acknowledgedthat, within the setting of the NEP, it was possible to dealcorrectly with the contradictions that inevitably counterposedthe proletariat to “the class of private-property-owners, i.e.,the peasantry,” 24 and that, under these conditions, thesocialist road could triumph over the capitalist road: “Thesocialist path . . . means development by a continuous im-provement in the well-being of the majority of the peasantry.It is in the interest of both the proletariat and the peasantry,particularly of the latter, that development should proceedalong . . . the socialist path, for that is the peasantry’s onlysalvation from impoverishment and a semi-starvation exis-tence.” 25

Politically, the Fourteenth Conference stressed the need, ifthe worker-peasant alliance was to be strengthened, to respectrevolutionary legality and to eliminate the survivals from “warcommunism” in political and administrative work. One of theresolutions adopted mentioned that the achievement of theseaims required the entry in larger numbers of agriculturalworkers and poor and middle peasants into the Party organiza-tions. The Fourteenth Conference also declared that, at thestage which had now been reached, the Party’s principal taskmust be to revitalize the Soviets and improve the leader-ship of the peasantry by the proletariat through the organsof Soviet power, so that it was necessary to go forwardto the phase of developing soviet democracy. In his reporton the Fourteenth Conference, Stalin said that “the task ofimplanting Soviet democracy and revitalizing the Sovietsin the countryside should make it possible for us to recon-struct our state apparatus, to link it with the masses of thepeople, to make it sound and honest, simple and inexpen-sive. . . .” 27

26


This task—which was never fully realized—corresponded towhat Lenin had called for when he demanded the destructionof the state machine inherited from tsardom and its replace-ment by one that would be genuinely proletarian.28

It was a task that required, too, a change in the style of theleadership given by the Party. Stalin said that an end must beput to incorrect forms of leadership, that the Party must stopgiving orders to the peasants: “We must learn to explain to thepeasants patiently the questions they do not understand, wemust learn to convince the peasants, sparing neither time noreffort for this purpose.” 29

Fundamentally, then, the Fourteenth Conference definedsome of the conditions for strengthening the worker-peasantalliance, especially on the political plane, that of the Party’srelations with the peasant masses and Soviet democracy.

(c) The Fourteenth Conference and peasantproblems

The decisions taken by the Fourteenth Conference and bythe CC also concerned economic problems, especially thepolicy to be followed toward the well-to-do and rich peasants.

On the eve of the conference a number of speeches weremade which showed that the Party leadership was taking aless restrictive attitude to the rich peasants, whose pos-sibilities of accumulating and of increasing agricultural pro-duction were seen as indispensable to the development of theeconomy. At the beginning of April, for instance, Kamenevsaid to the Congress of Soviets of the Moscow region:

We must also revise our laws relating to the use of land, to theemployment of wage-labour [by farmers—C. B.], and to the leas-ing of land [which] are holding back the development of theproductive forces in the countryside and exacerbating class rela-tions instead of guiding them in the proper way. . . . We are for the development of the productive forces, we are against survi-vals which hinder the development of the productive forces. . . .we are for accumulation by the peasants, but we are for regulat-ing this accumulation.30


On April 17, 1925, Bukharin spoke on the same theme at amass meeting in Moscow, at which he said: “Our policy to-wards the rural areas must develop in such a way as partly toremove and abolish a number of restrictions which hinder thegrowth of the farms of the well-to-do peasant and the kulak. Tothe peasants, to all the peasants, we must say, Get rich, developyour farms, don’t be afraid that coercion will be used againstyou.” 31

Except for the expression, “Get rich,” the same themeswere expounded at the Fourteenth Conference, and met withopen opposition only from one delegate, Yuri Larin.32

Meeting on the day after the close of the conference, April30, the CC adopted a resolution on “the Party’s current tasks ineconomic policy in connexion with the economic needs of therural areas.” 33 This resolution widened the right to lease land,removed restrictions on the employment of wage earners inagriculture, reduced the agricultural tax, and condemned thepractice of imposing fixed prices when procuring agriculturalproduce.34

The decisions of the CC of April 30, 1925, were based on thework done at the Fourteenth Conference and marked a drifttoward a conception of the NEP whose practical applicationcontradicted the demands of the alliance between the workingclass and the mass of the peasantry. These decisions aimed atfinding a solution to the general problem of accumulation inthe Soviet economy by favoring accumulation by the rich andwell-to-do peasants.

(d) The birth of the new opposition and itscondemnation by the FourteenthCongress

This conception of the NEP facilitated fresh attacks on theworker-peasant alliance. At the beginning of the summer of1925, several leaders of the Party began openly criticizing thedecisions taken in April. Some of them, including Zinoviev,secretary of the Leningrad organization, put forward formula-tions which tended to challenge the NEP itself.


The first public onslaught on the decisions taken in thespring was made in a speech by Zinoviev on June 21, 1925. Hesaid that these decisions demonstrated the determination ofthe leadership to rely not on “the wretched peasant nag” buton the fat kulak horse.35 In September Zinoviev published abook entitled Leninism,36 in which, interpreting certain quota-tions from Lenin, he asserted that in abandoning “war com-munism” for the NEP the Party had abandoned the socialisteconomic forms for “state capitalism in a proletarian state,”and added: “Let us have no illusions, no self-deception! Letus call state capitalism, state capitalism.” 37

On September 5 Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sokolnikov, andKrupskaya drew up a document which became known as the“platform of the 4.” Those who signed it included two mem-bers of the Political Bureau and Lenin’s widow, while thesignature of Sokolnikov, who had hitherto been a resolutesupporter of a “rightist” conception of the NEP, made thisplatform seem the point of convergence of dissenters of differ-ing views.

The “new opposition” thus born attacked the NEP and,echoing some workers’ demands, called for increases inwages. It denounced “the practices of the apparatus” andcalled for freedom of discussion and democracy in the Party.38

Some of the points made by the new opposition met withresponse among part of the working class, especially their callfor wage increases, which, in the situation existing then, wasdemagogic. It led some Party members to take part in unofficialstrikes.

On the whole, however, the opposition found little supportin the Party. The turnabout made by Zinoviev and Kamenev,who had previously been unconditional defenders of the NEPand of the wages policy followed until then,39 could evokenothing but skepticism.

The contradictions in the platform of the new opposition,the contrary positions so recently defended by Zinoviev andKamenev, and the conditions under which the delegates to theFourteenth Congress (December 18–31, 1925) were chosenensured that the representatives of this opposition at the con-


gress were few in number. However, they did succeed inspeaking. Zinoviev even presented a “political counter-report,” opposed to the one presented by Stalin. Though fre-quently interrupted, he developed his arguments, calling forrespect for democracy in the Party. He declared that the situa-tion of 1921 and 1923, which had justified the restrictionsimposed on freedom of discussion in the Party, now belongedto the past. “Today we have different workers, greater activityin the masses, other slogans.” And he added: “While permittingno factions, and on the question of factions maintaining ourprevious positions, we should at the same time instruct theCentral Committee to draw into Party work all the forces of allformer groups in our Party, and offer them the possibility towork under the leadership of the Central Committee.” 40

As regards the problems of the NEP, Zinoviev reiterated hisformulations of the summer and autumn, and concentrated hisattack upon Bukharin.

When he replied,41 Stalin, quoting Lenin, said that the con-cessions made to the peasantry were above all concessions tothe middle peasants, and that they were intended tostrengthen the worker-peasant alliance.42 He reminded hislisteners that the

N.E.P. is a special policy of the proletarian state aimed at permit-ting capitalism while the commanding positions are held by theproletarian state, aimed at a struggle between the capitalist andsocialist elements, aimed at increasing the role of the socialistelements to the detriment of the capitalist elements, aimed at thevictory of the socialist elements over the capitalist elements,aimed at the abolition of classes and the building of the founda-tions of a socialist economy.43

His argument regarding the question of state capitalism 44

was weak. Though he admitted that state capitalism was com-patible with the dictatorship of the proletariat, as Lenin hadsaid, he confined the notion of state capitalism to foreignconcessions. For him, the predominant role played by thestate-owned industrial sector sufficed to dispose of the ques-tion of state capitalism. He no more took up the question of the


capitalist relations that might prevail in state-owned industrythan did the “new opposition.” 45

Stalin ended his speech with an appeal for unity, saying:“The Party wants unity, and it will achieve it with Kamenevand Zinoviev, if they are willing, without them if they areunwilling.” 46

On December 23 a resolution whose terms were conceivedso as to avoid a break with the members of the opposition wastabled. This resolution was passed by 559 votes to the 65 castby the oppositionists.47

On January 1, 1926, a new Political Bureau was elected by aCC whose composition had been partly altered. Zinoviev wasstill a member of the PB, but Kamenev was reduced to therank of “alternative member.” Bukharin, Rykov, Stalin,Tomsky, and Trotsky were reelected; three new membersentered the PB: Voroshilov, Kalinin, and Molotov.

The opposition had suffered a heavy defeat. The Party ap-paratus in Leningrad was reorganized by a delegation from thecentral secretariat. Zinoviev was replaced by Kirov as firstsecretary of the Leningrad organization.

Among the important questions discussed by the Four-teenth Congress were also those of the trade unions and theindustrial policy.

(e) The Fourteenth Congress and thetrade-union question

The Fourteenth Congress pronounced a judgment that was,on the whole, severe in its strictures on the way that trade-union activity had been carried on in 1925. The resolutionadopted said that the unions had more often than not failed toface up to their obligations, allowing “their chief task, defenceof the economic interests of the masses,” to fall into the back-ground.48 It noted that a certain remoteness had developed“between the trade-union organs and the masses,” which re-sulted in “a weakening of trade-union discipline, as wasshown with particular clarity in a series of economic conflictsin the spring of 1925.” 49 It called for wider participation by the


masses in the work of the trade-union organizations, and de-manded that the unions participate more systematically in theanalyzing of economic and production problems, so as to beable to carry out a task of information and explanation.50 Itwarned against any tendency to form an “unnatural bloc”between the economic organs, the heads of enterprises, andthe trade unions.51 Consequently, the resolution denouncedthe numerous cases in which collective agreements were con-cluded with the economic organs by trade unions ignorant ofthe actual situation “of the workers and office-workers onwhose behalf they sign,” so that the agreements in question“enjoyed little authority in the eyes of the workers and offeredfew guarantees to the economic organs.” 52

In his political report to the Fourteenth Congress Stalindealt with the problems of industry. He considered that, sinceit had now attained a level of production close to the prewarlevel, “further steps in industry mean developing it on a newtechnical basis, with the utilisation of new equipment and thebuilding of new plants.” 53 What was now required was to crossa threshold, and consequently, owing to “a considerable short-age of capital,” the future development of industry “will, inall probability, proceed at a less rapid tempo than it has doneup to now.” 54 Stalin thus forecast that industry would growmore slowly than agriculture. In order to overcome the dif-ficulties resulting from this situation he advocated that effortsat industrialization be not restricted to the large-scale industrydirected by the central organs but that industrial developmentbe assisted “in every district, in every okrug, in every guber-nia, region and national republic.” 55 This was a prospect veryfar removed from the policy that was to be put into practice afew months later.

Elsewhere, in the reply he made to the discussion of hispolitical report, Stalin spoke of the need to develop industriesto produce equipment and machinery, so that the SovietUnion should not run the risk of becoming “an appendage ofthe capitalist countries.” 56

One of the resolutions adopted by the Congress expressedthe same demand, considering that it was of fundamental


importance “to carry on economic construction with a view toconverting the U.S.S.R. from a country that imports machineryand equipment into one that produces them for itself.” 57

The Fourteenth Congress thus took up the problem of in-dustrialization while remaining very vague as to the pace atwhich it should progress and the conditions for financing it.

III. From the Fourteenth Congress to theeve of the Fifteenth

The “compromise” adopted by the Fourteenth Congress onthe question of the “new opposition” did not put a stop to theoppositional activity of Zinoviev and Kamenev and their al-lies. The continuance of this activity reflected the reservationsfelt by a fairly large number of Party members regarding theNEP and a peasant policy which they considered to be ahindrance to rapid industrialization. The opposition declaredfor speeding up the pace of industrial development and per-sisted in advocating that recourse be had, for this purpose, to“primitive socialist accumulation.” In 1926 the discussion onthis subject was broadened. It revolved mainly around Preob-razhensky’s book The New Economics,58 which Bukharin sub-jected to a series of critical articles, one of the most importantof which appeared in Pravda under the title: “The ‘Law ofPrimitive Socialist Accumulation,’ or Why We Should NotReplace Lenin by Preobrazhensky.” 59

(a) The birth of the “united opposition”

At the Fourteenth Congress Zinoviev had prepared theground for an attempt at bringing together “all the formergroups in the Party,” 60 which signified principally an “open-ing” in the direction of Trotsky.61

This “opening” led, at the end of March or the beginning ofApril, to contact being made between Trotsky, Zinoviev, andKamenev. About this time they agreed to cease repeating the


accusations they had been hurling at each other until then. Inthis way there began to take shape an opposition which Stalinwas to describe as “an unprincipled bloc.” 62

Trotsky now came forward actively after having remainedpassive for almost two years. He made himself the advocate ofa rate of industrial development higher than that officiallyproposed by Dzerzhinsky. The latter criticized Trotsky andZinoviev sharply for their statements, accusing them of pre-paring a “new platform,” to be based on exploitation of thepeasants. Stalin spoke to the same effect. Eventually the reso-lution on industrialization was adopted unanimously, but thedebate revealed how Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev werenow aligned together.63

This alignment led to the formation, at the beginning of1926, of what was called the “united opposition,” on the basisof the “declaration of the thirteen.”64 This dealt mainly withindustrial policy and with the divisions in the Party. Trotskyexpounded particularly the idea that the Party’s “bureau-cracy” threatened the revolution with a sort of “Thermidor.” 65

At the plenum of July 14–23, 1926, the “united opposition”acted openly in concert, demanding higher wages for theworkers and an increase in the agricultural tax on the richpeasants.66

The Party leadership denounced the demagogic character ofthe opposition’s arguments and the very serious threat thatthey offered to the worker-peasant alliance. Dzerzhinsky, aschairman of the VSNKh, made a long, closely reasoned speechon this theme.67 But the Party leadership also used organiza-tional measures to reply to the opposition. At the plenum ofJuly 1926, Zinoviev was removed from the PB and one of hisassociates, M. Lashevich, from the CC and also from his postin the Revolutionary Military Council. These measures weretaken as punishment for factional activity.68 On this occasionRudzutak entered the Political Bureau, and Mikoyan, An-dreyev, Ordzhonikidze, Kaganovich, and Kirov became “al-ternative members.” Trotsky retained his membership.

However, the united opposition continued its activity.Trotsky, Zinoviev, and others of its leaders spoke at meetingsof factory cells, as the Party rules allowed them to do. At first,


their speeches seem to have evoked some response, but verysoon the Party organizations in Moscow and Leningrad setthemselves to put a stop to the opposition’s activity, interven-ing physically to prevent its spokesmen from getting theirmessage across. They succeeded in doing this, for the rank andfile of the Party remained ultimately indifferent to the opposi-tion’s theses.

During 1926, finding itself unable to obtain a hearing, theopposition organized itself. Thereby it took the path of fac-tional activity. According to various sources, its active support-ers numbered between four and eight thousand. Thesefigures are very small in comparison with the Party’s totalmembership at that time (about a million), but not negligiblein relation to the numbers of those who took part actively inpolitical discussions, which meant not more than a few tens ofthousands.69

In any case, the development of the opposition’s organiza-tion did not escape the attention of the OGPU. The leaders ofthe opposition, fearing punishment for factional activity,therefore sought a discussion with the Party secretariat. Afterthis discussion, on October 16 they signed a declaration inwhich, without renouncing the line of the “declaration of thethirteen,” they admitted that they had broken disciplineand engaged in factional activity.70

By putting their names to this statement the leaders of theopposition hoped to be allowed to present their views inwriting to the Fifteenth Party Conference. The CC plenumwhich met on October 23–26 rejected this demand, however,and took measures against the opposition’s leaders. Trotskywas removed from the PB, Kamenev lost his position as an“alternative member” of that body, and Zinoviev ceased to bechairman of the Executive Committee of the Comintern.71

(b) The Fifteenth Conference and the firstdefeat of the “united opposition” in1926

The Fifteenth Conference, which was held between Oc-tober 26 and November 3, 1926, saw the united opposition


defeated. The debate on this subject was opened by Stalin,who laid before the conference theses on “the opposition blocin the C.P.S.U.(B.)” 72 and on November 1 presented a reporton “the Social-Democratic deviation in our Party.” 73

Stalin’s theses denounced the rallying of the “new opposi-tion” to the positions of Trotskyism: his report analyzed theway the opposition had developed, and gave a critique of itspositions. He formulated with particular clarity some of theprinciples of the NEP, especially as regards relations betweenindustry and agriculture. He said: “The opposition bloc . . .fails to realise and refuses to recognise that industry cannot beadvanced if the interests of agriculture are ignored or violated.It fails to understand that while industry is the leading ele-ment in the national economy, agriculture in its turn is thebase on which our industry can develop.” 74

Stalin then showed that the opposition’s theses led to peas-ant farming being treated as a “colony” which the proletarianstate had to “exploit,” and he quoted Preobrazhensky to thiseffect: “The more a country that is passing to a socialist organi-sation is economically backward, petty-bourgeois, and of apeasant character . . . the more it has to rely for socialist ac-cumulation on the exploitation of pre-socialist forms ofeconomy.” 75

Stalin’s formulation emphasizing that agriculture was thebasis for the development of industry was of greatimportance—it made explicit one of the principles of the NEPwhich held a preponderant place in the documents approvedby the Bolshevik Party’s leading organs right down to 1928.

Kamenev, Trotsky, and Zinoviev spoke at the Conference insupport of the views they had been advocating jointly sincethe spring, and declared that they sought to achieve a “com-mon effort” by the Party as a whole. The speeches of Kamenevand Zinoviev were violently interrupted, while Trotsky waslistened to in silence. All three were replied to, in particular,by Molotov and Bukharin, who refuted the opposition’s argu-ments, while some of its former supporters—notablyKrupskaya—broke with it. Stalin replied to the discussion,76

going over again the main arguments of his opening report. Heconcluded by saying to the members of the opposition:


“Either you observe these conditions, which are at the sametime the conditions for the complete unity of our Party, or youdo not—and then the Party, which gave you a beating yester-day, will proceed to finish you off tomorrow.” 77

The resolution condemning the opposition bloc 78 waspassed unanimously by the Fifteenth Conference which thusconfirmed the sanctions taken by the preceding plenumagainst Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev.

One of the resolutions of the Fifteenth Conference madeexplicit in a particularly clear way what was implied by theprinciples of the NEP. It pointed out that in order tostrengthen the worker-peasant alliance there must be an im-provement in the supply of machines and other goods to therural areas, better organization of the marketing of agriculturalproduce, provision of credit for agriculture, and aid to the poorpeasants, through special credits and through support for thedevelopment of collective farming. The resolution was favor-able to the development of rural industry, especially for theprocessing of agricultural produce, and it condemned the op-position’s advocacy of raising industrial prices and loweringagricultural prices.79

Actually, as we know, the practical measures that this reso-lution called for were not taken. In the months that followed,the rural areas experienced a grave shortage of manufacturedproducts, while the rural crafts were deprived of a large pro-portion of their raw material of urban origin, this being re-erved to an ever greater extent for the needs of large-scaleindustry.

(c) The breakup of the opposition, itsattempt to reorganize, and its freshdefeat on the eve of the FifteenthCongress

After the defeat it suffered at the Fifteenth Conference, theopposition began to disintegrate. The supporters of the “dem-ocratic centralism” group broke away and tried to form a group(the “group of 15”) which would operate outside the Party,


with a view, as they put it, to constituting “a nucleus fordefence of the cause of the proletarian revolution,” which theysaw as having been betrayed by the Party and by the opposi-tion.80 This group had no political weight and soon disap-peared.

On the morrow of the Fifteenth Conference, Zinoviev andKamenev were willing to cease maintaining a position differentfrom that of the majority, whereas Trotsky wished to keep upthe opposition’s fight, even though he realized that it could notalter the balance of forces within the Party. At the end of 1926Zinoviev and Kamenev rejoined Trotsky, and the opposition,which had suffered numerous defections, once more operatedas a clandestine faction.81

At the end of March 1927, Trotsky began attacking, in lettersaddressed to the PB, the line advocated by the Comintern forthe Chinese Communist Party, and demanded that a discus-sion be opened on the “China question.”82 Trotsky believedin “the unconditional predominance, the direct domination ofcapitalist relations in China,” and that “a class of landlords as aseparate class does not exist in China. The landowners and thenational bourgeoisie are one and the same.” 83 Consequently, he re-jected any policy of a united front with the Chinesebourgeoisie, and was later to declare that “only the predomi-nance of the proletariat in the decisive industrial and politicalcentres of the country creates the necessary basis for the or-ganisation of a Red Army and for the extension of a sovietsystem into the countryside.” 84

Although they were mistaken as to the real line of theKuomintang, and gravely underestimated its capacity to turnon the working class (as shown in the repression begun byChiang Kai-shek on April 12, in Shanghai), the leadership ofthe Bolshevik Party and the Executive Committee of the Com-intern made an analysis that was more correct than the opposi-tion’s of the nature of the Chinese revolution. This analysiswas set forth by Stalin in a series of theses published inPravda on April 21, 1927.85

Having failed to get the China question discussed by theCC, the united opposition appealed to the Executive Commit-


tee of the Comintern, supporting its approach with a statementcalled the “declaration of the 83,” from the number of its origi-nal signatories.86 By acting in this way it appeared once more inthe role of an organized faction.

On May 24 Trotsky addressed the Executive Committee ofthe Comintern, presenting his analysis of the situation. Stalinreplied, showing the ultraleft character of Trotsky’s views andrecalling Lenin’s theses on the possibility and necessity offarming peasant soviets in countries such as China and In-dia. 87 Here, too, the question of alliance with the peasantmasses, with the place and role of the latter in an action forrevolutionary change led by the proletariat, formed the line ofdemarcation between the positions defended by the majorityof the Bolshevik Party and those of the opposition.

After listening to several other speeches, the ExecutiveCommittee of the Comintern condemned Trotsky’s views andconfirmed, though with some corrections, the line which hadbeen followed until then.88

The opposition’s resumed activity evoked a series of sanc-tions. Some members of the opposition were arrested, otherswere posted to the provinces or sent abroad. The oppositionthen appeared to retreat, by signing, on the occasion of theplenum of August 7 a declaration stating: “We will carry outall the decisions of the Communist Party and of its CentralCommittee. We are prepared to do everything possible todestroy all factional elements which have formed themselvesas a consequence of the fact that on account of the inner-Partyregime we were compelled to inform the Party of our opin-ions, which were falsely reported in the whole press of thecountry.” 89

This declaration saved the opposition, for the moment, fromexpulsion from the Party. Nevertheless, though they drew up a“platform” recapitulating their views, they found that theywere refused the right to publish the platform and circulate itin the Party in preparation for the Fifteenth Congress. Theytherefore took steps to print and circulate it clandestinely, andheld illegal meetings. Eventually, at the plenum of October21–23, 1927, Stalin called for sanctions to be taken against


Trotsky and Zinoviev. After a discussion marked by violentincidents, these two were removed from the CC on the groundsthat they had broken Party discipline.90

The opposition was now nearing its final defeat. Its motions(when they could be presented at meetings of Party members)received only a very small number of votes. The right to speakwas almost always denied to its representatives. In a lasteffort, the opposition tried, during the demonstration com-memorating the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution,to organize its own procession of demonstrators. They num-bered in the few hundreds, and were quickly dispersed orarrested. On November 14, eighteen days before the FifteenthCongress, Zinoviev and Trotsky were expelled from the Party.Kamenev and some other supporters of the opposition whowere still on the CC were removed from it. The united opposi-tion had practically ceased to exist. The Fifteenth Congresswas held without the delegates including any open advocatesof the line of accelerated industrialization. The Congress rat-ified the decisions taken by the CC on November 14. It con-demned the opposition for breaking with Leninist ideology,for taking up “Menshevik positions,” for having “denied thesocialist nature of state-owned industry” and the possibility of“the socialist road of development for the countryside underthe conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat,” togetherwith “the policy of alliance between the proletariat and thebasic mass of the peasantry on the basis of Socialist construc-tion.” The opposition was accused of having “in practice de-nied that the dictatorship of the proletariat exists in theU.S.S.R.” (by its talk of “Thermidor”), thereby making itself atool of petty-bourgeois democracy and international socialdemocracy. It was also condemned for indiscipline and fac-tional activity.91

IV. The Fifteenth Congress

The Fifteenth Congress of the Bolshevik Party was held onthe morrow of the political defeat of the supporters of an


opposition which gave the “exigencies” of rapid and cen-tralized industrialization priority over the policy of consolidat-ing the worker-peasant alliance within the framework of theNEP. The Congress resolutions included some especiallyclear formulations regarding this policy.

(a) The resolutions of the FifteenthCongress

These resolutions dealt chiefly with agricultural and peas-ant questions and with problems of industry and planning.92

They reaffirmed the need to continue the NEP while stressinga concrete policy which included certain modifications in thispolicy as compared with the previous period. These con-cerned, especially, measures to restrict “the exploiting ten-dencies of the kulaks.”

This new orientation was put forward for the first time byBukharin,93 in a speech delivered two months before the Con-gress, on October 12, 1927. In this speech Bukharin said that itwas now possible to exercise “increased pressure on thekulaks,” because, during the last two years, the alliance withthe peasant masses had been strengthened, together with theState’s commanding positions.94

The Fifteenth Congress also declared in favor of a policy ofcollectivization, but emphasized that this must be carriedthrough with caution, by means of persuasion and withoutconstraint. There could be observed, however, certain shadesof difference between the way in which, on the one hand,Bukharin, Rykov (who was then chairman of the Sovnarkom ofthe USSR), and Kalinin, and, on the other, Stalin, presentedthe question of collectivization. For the former, collectiviza-tion was one of the elements in a policy aimed at solving theproblems of agriculture. Stalin said of collectivization that“there is no other way out”—no other solution to the problemsof Soviet agriculture95 though, during the Congress, he did notadvocate either rapid collectivization or the use of coercion.

As regards the conditions for developing industrialization,the Congress resolutions repeated, in the main, the formula-


tions to be found in Bukharin’s writings following the Four-teenth Congress, calling for more rapid industrialization whileat the same time attacking the “super-industrializers” of the unitedopposition, the advocates of maximum accumulation tobe achieved at the expense of the peasantry (especially by“opening the scissors”).96

The resolution of the Fifteenth Congress on the drawing upof the Five-Year Plan counterposed to the striving for“maximum” accumulation the need for “optimum” accumula-tion:

As regards relations between production and consumption, itmust be clearly seen that we cannot proceed from a simultaneousmaximising of both, as the opposition now demands. . . . Payingattention to the relative contradiction between these two factors,their reciprocal action and the connexions between them, andappreciating that, from the standpoint of long-term development,their interests generally coincide, we must proceed from an op-timum combination of these two factors.97

The resolution declared that the same requirements must beobserved as regards

relations between town and country, between socialist industryand peasant farming. It is not right to proceed from the demandfor a maximum transfer [perekachka: literally, pumping] of re-sources from peasant farming into industry for this would notonly signify a political breach with the peasantry but also wouldundermine the supply of raw materials to industry itself, disruptboth the internal market and exports, and upset the entire eco-nomic system.98

On the question of rates of development, the resolution alsostressed the idea of an “optimum” rate, declaring: “Here wemust proceed not from the maximum rate of accumulation inthe near future or within a few years, but from a relationbetween the factors in the economy such that the highest rateof development may be ensured over a long period.” 99

In the course of this resolution the opposition’s slogan ofraising industrial prices was again condemned, on the groundsthat it would favor bureaucratic degeneration and monopolis-


tic disintegration of industry, harm the consumers (and, in thefirst place, the working class and the poorer strata in town andindustry), give the kulaks a trump card to play, and finally,bring about a sharp decline in the rate of development, bycompromising industry’s agricultural basis.100

The resolution likewise upheld the need to observe an op-timum relation between the development of light industry andheavy industry. It emphasized that, when shifting the centerof gravity from light to heavy industry, care must be taken thatthe latter did not tie up too large a share of the state’s capital inthe construction of very big enterprises whose products wouldnot come on to the market for many years, and, consequently,that account must be taken of the fact that the faster turnover ofcapital in light industry (producing consumer goods of primenecessity) enabled the capital resulting from it to be sub-sequently used in heavy industry, while at the same timeensuring the development of light industry itself.101

The Fifteenth Party Conference, in November 1926, hadalready resolved that observance of these principles wouldmake it possible gradually to speed up the pace at which theeconomy was developing, and to “catch up with and thensurpass” the “levels of industrial development of the leadingcapitalist countries in a relatively short historical period.”102

From the standpoint of the class struggle and of the relationbetween class forces, the Fifteenth Congress reaffirmed thatthe decisions of the Fifteenth Conference and of the Four-teenth Congress had laid down a policy that was basicallycorrect, especially as regards the rural area. The resolutionadopted considered that these decisions had helped tostrengthen the alliance between the working class and themass of the peasants, and that this created the possibility ofgoing over, with the help of all the poor and middle peasants,to a systematic curbing of kulak farming and private enterprisegenerally, so as to bring about “a relative decline . . . in theprivate capitalist elements in town and country alike.”103

Finally, the Congress noted that the Five-Year Plan wouldbe drawn up in awareness that there might be some badharvests. 104 It should therefore not be too “taut,” but suf-


ficiently “flexible” to be adapted to the fluctuations of agricul-tural production.

The theses on “optimum accumulation” and on the need tomaintain correct proportions between the development of in-dustry and agriculture, between heavy industry and light in-dustry, between town and country, repeated almost word forword the formulations used by Bukharin in his fight againstthe united opposition. Bukharin had expressed thus his con-ception of the relations that should be established betweenlight and heavy industry:

I think that the formula which calls for maximum investment inheavy industry is not quite correct—or, rather, that it is abso-lutely incorrect. While we must emphasise mainly the develop-ment of heavy industry, we must at the same time combine thiswith a corresponding development of light industry, in whichturnover is faster and profits made sooner, and which repays in ashorter time the outlay devoted to it.105

Bukharin claimed that, if proper proportions were observed inthe development of the different sectors of the economy, theresult would be economic development that would follow “arising curve.”106 This formulation, aimed at warning againstdesire to speed up too suddenly the rate of economic growth,was to be interpreted later as expressing belief in the possibil-ity of a sort of “indefinite acceleration” of economic growth.

The resolutions adopted unanimously by the FifteenthCongress reaffirmed, even more clearly than the FourteenthCongress and the Fifteenth Conference had done, the need toestablish definite relations and proportions between the dif-ferent sectors of the economy. These resolutions recognizedthat respect for these relations was essential if the economywas to advance without jolts, if a policy of “closing the scis-sors” between industrial and agricultural prices was to becarried out, and if there was to be a regular supply of goods tothe rural area and to the towns on a basis of prices whichwould not be subject to inflationary increases.

However, these principles were violated by the adoption ofa series of measures that were incompatible with them, and


from this followed the development of contradictions whichmade themselves sharply felt from the end of 1927 on. Theprocurement crisis was a spectacular consequence of thesecontradictions, which, because they were not brought undercontrol, found expression in two political lines which cameinto conflict more and more obviously in 1928 and 1929.

Before examining the content of this conflict and the forms ittook, a few words should be said about the contradictionsbetween the policy actually followed and the resolutionspassed by the Congress.

(b) The development of the contradictionsbetween the principles stated in theresolutions of the Party’s congressesand conferences and the economicpolicy actually carried out

These contradictions existed at several levels. Broadly, wecan say that they mainly affected the scope and the orientationof the industrial investment plans which constituted the nu-cleus of the actual economic policy. In a secondary way, theyconcerned pragmatic measures taken with a view to palliatingto some degree certain consequences resulting from the scopeand orientation of these investment plans.

(1) The industrial investment plans from1926–1927 on

We have already seen that the Fourteenth Congress and theFifteenth Conference warned against too rapid an increase inindustrial investment, because of the danger that such anincrease would present to the worker-peasant alliance.107

Nevertheless, the Fifteenth Conference adopted a resolution,on the situation and the economic tasks of the reconstructionperiod, which fixed at a minimum of 900 million roubles theamount of industrial investment for the year 1926-1927.108

Yet, a few months previously, an amount of investment closeto that had been rejected by Dzerzhinsky on the grounds that


such a figure was incompatible with the actual economic situa-tion.109

In adopting this figure the conference practically ratified theinvestment programs already in motion by the industrial or-ganizations. To some extent, these organizations operatedwith sufficient autonomy for the Party’s leading bodies to findthemselves (through not having intervened in good time)faced with faits accomplis which they were, so to speak, ob-liged to “confirm.”

The same process occurred during the months that fol-lowed, for the figure adopted by the Fifteenth Conference waslargely surpassed. In December 1926 the VSNKh approved aplan for industrial investment which totaled 947 million rou-bles. Five weeks later, the CC and the Sovnarkom ratified thisfigure, while making some reservations. Subsequently, 991million roubles were allocated for industrial investments—but, in the end, these investments absorbed 1,068 million,nearly one-third more than in the previous year,110 while theabsolute amount of investment in industries producing con-sumer goods declined. 111 Thus, all the appeals for “caution”issued previously by the Party’s leading bodies, and by Stalinhimself, were “forgotten.” 112 And yet the political significanceof these appeals could not have been clearer: what wasneeded was to ensure industrial development based on coop-eration with the peasantry and not on exploitation of them.113

This “forgetting” of the previously made calls for prudencehad political implications. Its immediate basis was the relativeautonomy of the industrial organizations, and it reflected thepower of that social force which was represented by the headsof these organizations and of the great enterprises. It presup-posed the gradual, but not openly admitted, rallying of a sec-tion of the Party’s leaders to an actual policy that accordedmajor importance to the rapid growth of large-scale industryproducing means of production, a policy which was increas-ingly remote from the demands of the worker-peasant al-liance, with its implications of relatively preferential supply-ing of goods to the rural areas, and grain procurement on anoncoercive basis.


This change in policy actually pursued corresponded also toa certain change in the Bolshevik ideological formation—theincreased role of conceptions which favored the most up-to-date industrial techniques and ascribed a decisive role toaccumulation in the development of industrial production(even though small and medium rural industry still possessedenormous possibilities for increased production, productionthat would have greatly helped the peasants to increase theirharvests). Little by little, an orientation was gaining ground inthe Party which favored industrial investment of a magnitudeand nature such as to be incompatible with the maintenance ofthe NEP. In this sense, the “general crisis of the NEP” wassimply the crisis that resulted from the de facto abandonment,in decisive domains, of the New Economic Policy.

Nevertheless, the open change of “line,” and the “turn” thatwent with it, were not to be proclaimed until after a series ofstruggles had been waged, through 1928 and 1929, inside theParty leadership.

(2) The rapid growth in budgetaryexpenditure and its immediate effects

The appeals for caution issued by the Party’s congresses andconferences applied also to the size of budgetary expenditure. Itwas feared that too rapid an increase in this would underminethe policy of stabilizing prices, and even reducing industrialprices, which was one of the components of the NEP. Here,too, these appeals were gradually “forgotten.” In 1926–1927 thetotal amount of budgetary expenditure was 41 percentgreater than in the previous year, whereas the national in-come, in constant prices, had increased by only 6.3 percent.114

A period was thus entered in which the increase in publicexpenditure bore no relation to the increase in real resources.This was the point of departure of grave imbalances, shortagesin the rural area, price increases, and increased hardships forthe poor and middle peasants.

In this situation the prices reigning in the sphere of privatetrade reflect in a very clear way the inflation that was develop-


ing. Between December 1926 and June 1929 the retail pricesof agricultural produce in private shops increased by 130 per-cent.115

The relative indifference shown to the inflationary conse-quence of an increase in budgetary expenditure that had nocounterpart in increased real resources reflected the progressof illusions (connected with the changes in the Bolshevikideological formation) regarding the capacity of the politicalauthority to bring about price changes independently ofchanges in costs and of shortage of supplies. Thus, Kuibyshevthought it possible to proclaim the “victory of the plan” overmarket forces.116 The economist Strumilin went even furtherwhen he declared: “We are not bound by any (objective) law.There is no fortress that Bolsheviks cannot storm. The ques-tion of tempo is subject to men’s will.” 117

These were the earliest expressions of the “voluntarist”illusions which developed rapidly during the years 1928 and1929. They contributed to the appearance of a series of eco-nomic imbalances which had profoundly negative effects onthe worker-peasant alliance.

(3) The contradictions entailed by the taxmeasures taken in favor of the poor andmiddle peasant

Starting at the end of 1923, price policy aimed at improvingthe standard of living of the peasant masses. This policy metwith success so long as it made possible the closing of the“scissors” between industrial and agricultural prices,118 andso long as the increased cash incomes of the peasants found acounterpart in a sufficiently increased supply of manufacturedgoods available in the villages. Generally speaking, despitetemporary or local difficulties, this was so until the autumn of1927.

At that moment the situation worsened seriously, for thesupply of goods to the village declined as a result of theindustrial investment policy and of the priority given to sup-plying the towns. With many village shops empty of goods, the


Soviet government decided, on the occasion of the tenth an-niversary of the October Revolution, to relieve the poorestsection of the peasantry almost completely of their obligationto pay the agricultural tax. This meant that 35 percent of allpeasant households were exonerated from paying taxes in Oc-tober 1927, as against 25 percent in the previous year. Fur-thermore, it was decided to use less pressure to get in arrearsof tax payments, 119 so that at the beginning of 1928 theseamounted to 20 percent of the agricultural tax payable duringthe fiscal year begun in 1927.

These measures would have been in accordance with theline of the NEP if the villages had been properly suppliedwith goods. As, however, this was not the case, the peasantslooked askance at money they could exchange for goods onlyto a limited extent. This was one of the causes of the declinein agricultural deliveries which was observed from October1927 on, the decline which led to the adoption of the“emergency measures” and the abandonment of the NEP.

(4) The contradictions in wage policy

Implementation of the policy of “closing the scissors” be-tween industrial and agricultural prices encountered obstaclesof several kinds: first and foremost, the high level of costs ofproduction in industry, due to the fact that wages often in-creased faster than the productivity of labor.120 This was aneffect of the pressure brought to bear by the workers in thefactories, pressure to which the heads of enterprises eventu-ally yielded.121

At the same time, wage increases unaccompanied by asufficient increase in the production of consumer goodsbrought about either pressure for an increase in retail prices orthe development of “shortages” of goods. The shortage ofindustrial products became very serious when, owing to thepriority given to investments in heavy industry, there was aslowing down in the rate of growth of the production of man-ufactured consumer goods, which happened in 1927. Yet, inthat same year, the demand for manufactured consumer goods


on the part of the wage earners increased sharply, for em-ployment in industry (including building) increased by 12.4percent122 and average wages by 10 percent.123

Consequently, in the second half of 1927 the Soviet au-thorities found themselves faced with a rapid and simulta-neous growth of purchasing power in the towns and in the vil-lages. Unable to satisfy the whole of the increased demand forgoods, they decided to give priority to the urban market. Thisbeing so, the shortage of industrial goods hit the rural areashard just when the procurement of grain was being carriedout.

The years 1926–1927 and 1927–1928 were thus marked byaggravation of the contradictions between the policy actuallypursued and the political line decided on by the Party’s con-gresses and conferences. Other contradictions also affectedvarious aspects of the policy actually implemented, whichwere not mutually coherent, resulting as they did from pres-sures exerted by different classes and social strata. There wasthe workers’ pressure for higher wages and a rapid increase inemployment; pressure from the poor and middle peasantryfor a reduction in taxes; pressure from the heads of large-scale state-owned industry and the central industrial or-gans for the rapid launching of an industrialization plan thatgave priority to heavy industry. But these contradictions alsocorresponded to different conceptions that were present in theBolshevik Party regarding what was demanded for the build-ing of socialism, conceptions which tended to diverge furtherand further when the effects of the contradictions in the policyfollowed by the Party up to that point started to develop, andwhen beginning in early 1928, those effects took the form of anopen crisis.

It then became necessary to deal with the contradictionsbetween the line laid down in principle and the policy actu-ally followed. This was an essential aspect of the struggleswhich, in 1928 and 1929, counterposed within the Party lead-ership those who thought it possible and necessary to reaffirmthe principles accepted by the Fifteenth Congress, and whocalled for these principles to be put into effect, and those who


considered that the time had come for an immediate and rapidindustrialization drive (such as was already implicit in the an-nual plans adopted in and after 1926–1927) and who came outin favor of a political line contradictory to the resolutions ofthe Fifteenth Congress.

Among the supporters of the first of these “lines,” the onethat was called the “Right-wing” line, were Bukharin, Rykov,and Tomsky. The second line, which called for the levying of“tribute” from the peasantry, and collectivization carriedthrough with the minimum of delay, was supported by Stalin,Kuibyshev, and Molotov. The demands of this line graduallyprevailed, and it triumphed at the end of 1929.

Notes

1. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, p. 850.2. Ibid., pp. 842, 850 ff.3. Ibid., p. 850.4. Ibid., pp. 857, 58.5. The text of the “platform of the 46” is given in E. H. Carr, The

Interregnum, pp. 367 ff.6. Ibid., p. 367–368.7. Ibid., p. 368.8. Ibid., pp. 106–107.9. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, pp. 771 ff.

10. Ibid., p. 773.11. Ibid., pp. 767 ff., 778 ff.12. On this letter of Lenin’s see volume I of the present work, pp.

323–324, and Lenin, CW, vol. 36, pp. 593-596. On the reelec-tion of Stalin, see P. Broué, Le Parti bolchévique, p. 202, and L.Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, p. 287.

13. Carr, The Interregnum, p. 362.14. XIII-y Syezd RKP(b) (1924), pp. 153–168.15. L. Kamenev, Stati i ryechi (1925), vol. I, pp. 188–243.16. Ibid., and Carr, Socialism, vol. 2, p. 15.17. See Pravda, November 19 and 23, 192418. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, pp. 913 ff.


19. Carr, Socialism, vol. 2, p. 31.20. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, p. 390.21. K.P.S.S. v resolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 43 ff.22. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, pp. 112–113.23. E. Preobrazhensky, The New Economics, pp. 77 ff. The expres-

sion “primitive socialist accumulation” had already been usedby Trotsky in 1922: it seems to have been originated by Sap-ronov, one of the signatories of the platform of the 46 (Broué,Le Parti bolchévique, p. 213). Formally, Trotsky’s interpretationof the thesis of primitive socialist accumulation differed some-what from Preobrazhensky’s (see I. Deutscher, The Prophet Un-armed), but the political implications of accepting this thesiswere not affected.

The article by N. Bukharin entitled “A Critique of the Oppo-sition’s Economic Platform,” in Bolshevik, No. 1 (January 15,1925), gives a systematic criticism of the economic views ex-pounded by the opposition of the 46 and by Trotsky and Preob-razhensky in 1922–1924. A French translation of this article isincluded in N. Bukharin et al., Le Débat soviétique sur la loi dela valeur, pp. 201 ff.

24. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, p. 111.25. Ibid., p. 112.26. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 11, 13.27. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, pp. 127-128.28. See volume I of the present work, especially pp. 329 ff., 446 ff.,

522 ff.29. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, p. 128.30. Kamenev, Stati i ryechi (1926), vol. 12, pp. 132–133.31. Pravda, April 24. 1925. This version was described as

“abridged.” A complete but revised text of the speech wassubsequently published in Bolshevik, nos. 8 and 9–10 (1925).

32. Carr, Socialism, vol. 1, p. 263.33. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, pp. 922–932.34. Carr, Socialism , vol. 1, pp. 268–269.35. Leningradskaya Pravda, June 24, 1925, quoted in Carr,

Socialism, vol. 1, p. 286.36. G. Zinoviev, Leninizm.37. Ibid., pp. 236–258.38. Carr, Socialism, vol. 2, pp. 66–68, 108 ff.39. In November 1924, Zinoviev had still been warning against a


“narrowly trade-unionist policy,” reminding the unions thatthey had to pursue “the politics of the working class in a peasantcountry” (VI-ox Syezd Professionalnykh Soyuzov SSSR [1925],p. 29).

40. Carr, Socialism, vol. 2, pp. 141–142.41. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, pp. 362 ff.42. Ibid., pp. 367–368.43. Ibid., p. 374.44. Ibid., pp. 375 ff.45. Stalin also dealt with this question in his political report, where

his analysis of it was equally limited (ibid., pp. 312–313).46. Ibid., p. 401.47. XIV-y Syezd VKP(b) (1926), pp. 521-524; see Carr, Socialism,

vol. 2, p. 144.48. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2. p. 95.49. Ibid., p. 96.50. Ibid., p. 9851. Ibid., p. 100.52. Ibid., p. 101.53. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, p. 322.54. Ibid., p. 322. Here he voiced the doctrine which was later to be

known as that of “decreasing tempos,” and which Stalin himselfwas to denounce as “Trotskyist.”

55. Ibid., p. 323.56. Ibid., pp. 364–365.57. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 75.58. See above, p. 393, n. 23.59. Pravda, no. 153 (1926). There is a French translation in N.

Bukharin, Le Socialisme dans un seul pays, p. 67.60. See above, p. 371.61. Besides the Trotskyist opposition there still survived at this

time a group which called for “democratic centralism,” led bySapronov, and the remains of the “Workers’ Opposition,” led byShlyapnikov (on these groups, see volume I of the present work,pp. 368-410). Several members of these groups had been ex-pelled from the Party, and some arrested. In 1923 the GPU hadliquidated two other groups, most of whose members werenon-Party: the “Workers’ Truth” group, inspired by Bogdanov,and the “Workers’ Group” founded by Myasnikov (see Scha-piro, The Communist Party, pp. 300–301).

62. At the Fifteenth Party Conference: Stalin, Works, vol. 8,pp. 225 ff.


63. Carr, Socialism, vol. 2, pp. 172–173.64. Schapiro, The Communist Party, p. 302. The text of the “decla-

ration” is in the Trotsky archives at Harvard University.

Communist Party, p. 303.66. Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, pp. 275–276; Carr and

Davies, Foundations, vol. I, p. 5.67. Pravda, August 1, 1926. It was after making this speech that

Dzerzhinsky, who was a sick man, had a fatal heart attack. Aweek later he was succeeded at the head of the VSNKh byKuibyshev.

68. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 160 ff., and Schapiro, TheCommunist Party, p. 304.

69. Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, pp. 273–274.70. Broué, Le Parti bolchévique, pp. 243–244.71.72. Stalin, Works, vol. 8, p. 225.73. Ibid., pp. 245 ff.74. Ibid., p. 301 (my emphasis—C. B.)75.

lished under the title: “The Fundamental Law of Socialist Ac-cumulation,” in Vestnik Kommunisticheskoy Akademii, no. 8(1924). In the corresponding passage in his book The New Eco-nomics, p. 124, he replaced the expression “exploitation” by“alienating part of the surplus product.”

76. Stalin, Works, vol. 8, pp. 311 ff.77. Ibid., p. 370.78. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 209 ff.79. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 180–181.80. Broué, Le parti bolchévique, pp. 249–250.81. Ibid., pp. 250–252, 259.82. Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, p. 327, and B. Fabrègues,

“La ‘Revolution permanente’: une absurde théorie gauchiste,”pt. 2, “La Revolution chinoise,” in Communisme, no. 12(September-October 1974), pp. 33 ff.

83. Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, p. 209, and Writ-ings, 1930–1931, p. 21.

84. Trotsky, Writings, 1930–1931, p. 19. These lines, written in1930, express Trotsky’s fundamental position as it was in1927—a position which the history of the Chinese revolutionhas utterly refuted.

85. Stalin, Works, vol. 9, pp. 224 ff.

65. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, p. 5; Schapiro, The

K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 170–171.

Quoted in ibid., p. 302. Preobrazhensky’s original text was pub-


86. Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, p. 334.87. Stalin, Works, vol. 9, p. 302.88. Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, p. 337.89. International Press Correspondence, vol. 7, no. 48 (August 18,

1927).90. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 311.91. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 368 ff.92. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 312–371.93. An analysis of the way Bukharin’s ideas evolved is given in

Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: APolitical Biography, 1888–1938: for the period leading up to theFifteenth Congress see especially chapter 7, pp. 213 ff.

94. International Press Correspondence, vol. 7, p. 1422. See also anarticle by Bukharin which appeared a fortnight later (inV zashchitu proletarskoy diktatury: Sbornik, pp. 202–211,215, 224–231).

95. Stalin, Works, vol. 10, p. 313.96. Bukharin, Le Socialisme, pp. 67 ff.97. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 333.98. Ibid.99. Ibid., p. 334.

100. Ibid.101. Ibid.102. Ibid., p. 175. This appears to have been the first time that the

formulation “catch up with and then surpass” was used of-ficially (Cohen, Bukharin, p. 245)

103. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 334.104. Ibid., p. 332.105. Bukharin, V zashchitu, p. 225.106. Bukharin, Building Up Socialism, p. 62.107. See above, pp. 374 ff., 377 ff.108. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 173 ff., especially p. 185.109. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 2, pp. 278–281.110. Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta, December 30, 1926; Sob-

ranie Zakonov, no. 10 (1927), art. 98; Carr and Davies, Founda-tions, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 278.

111. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 294.112. This “forgetfulness” was repeated in the succeeding years,

when industrial investments came to 1,304 million roubles(1927–1928) and 1,679 million roubles (192–1929): see ibid.,pp. 296, 314.


113. See Stalin’s speech of November 3, 1926, in Works, vol. 8, pp.368–369.

114. Carr and Davies , Foundations, vol. I, pt. 2, p. 742.115. In the same period the retail prices of foodstuffs in state and

cooperative shops increased by only 11 percent. The retailprices of industrial goods increased at about the same rate as inthe “private” sector, i.e., 15 percent (ibid., pp. 964–965).

116. Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta, August 14, 1927.117. Planovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 7 (1927), p. 11. The metaphor of the

“fortress” which can always be “stormed” was all the moreremarkable in that Lenin, faced with the negative political con-sequences of “war communism,” made use precisely of the“fortress” metaphor when he advocated substituting a strategyof siege and advance step by step for futile attempts at frontalassault (see volume 1 of the present work, pp. 457–459).

Four years later, Stalin was again to use this metaphor, saying,“Everything can be achieved, everything can be overcome, ifthere is a passionate desire for it. . . . There are no fortresses thatBolsheviks cannot capture” (Works, vol. 13, pp. 40, 43).

118. See above, pp. 150 ff.119. Pravda, October 16, 1927, report of the decisions of the second

session of the TsIK elected by the Fourth Congress of Soviets ofthe USSR, and various sources quoted in Grosskopf, L’Allianceouvrière, p. 331, n. 25; p. 356.

120. In 1925 the “scissors” between wages and productivity causedan increase of 2 percent in industrial costs, instead of the 6percent reduction provided for by the plan (A. Baykov, TheSoviet Economic System, p. 123). In 1926–1927 the rates ofincrease of productivity and wages were 9 percent and 12 per-cent, respectively, which went counter to the intention that had.been proclaimed to reduce costs of production in industry, so asto reduce the prices at which industrial products were soldwhile at the same time increasing industry’s capacity to ac-cumulate (K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 181 ff).

121. See above, p. 314.122. Trud v SSSR, p. 10.123. Ekonomicheskoye Obozreniye, no. 12 (1929), p. 204.

398

2. The fight for rapid industrializationand for priority for heavy industry

From January 1928 on, elements of a political line differentfrom that approved by the Fifteenth Congress began to beformulated explicitly. They made their appearance in thespeeches delivered by Stalin in Siberia (at Novosibirsk, Omsk,Barnaul, etc.), where he went in order to call for vigorousapplication of the emergency measures.1

In these speeches, Stalin did not speak only about thosemeasures. He also dwelt upon the technical superiority of thecollective and state farms. He stressed that these farms pro-duced “marketable surpluses” larger than those produced bythe kulak farms. He even mentioned quantitative targetswhich had not been contemplated by the Fifteenth Con-gress, saying that it was necessary to ensure that, “in thecourse of the next three or four years the collective farmsand state farms, as deliverers of grain, are in a position tosupply the state with at least one-third of the grain re-quired.” 2

I. The clashes in the first months of 1928

The three first months of 1928 were marked by the de-velopment of divergences (which were not publicly pro-claimed) between, on the one hand, the “three” (Bukharin,Rykov, and Tomsky) and, on the other, Stalin, Molotov, andKuibyshev. The remaining members of the PB vacillated,more or less, between these two camps.


(a) The plenum of April 1928

During the plenum of April 1928 no direct clash occurredbetween Stalin and Bukharin. Nevertheless, each of thempresented a different picture of the situation.

Stalin denounced those who wanted a policy for the ruralareas that would “please everyone” saying that such a policyhad “nothing in common with Leninism.” 3 On his part,Bukharin denounced the tendency of “certain people” to lookupon the emergency measures as something “almost normal,”and to “exaggerate the recourse to administrative measures.” 4

In general, however, the April plenum passed off withoutobvious tension between the members of the PB. Broadly, theresolution which was adopted on the question of procurementand preparations for the agricultural campaign of 1928–1929repeated the theses of the Fifteenth Congress. It explained theprocurement crisis essentially by mistakes made in the appli-cation of economic policy, referring only in a subordinate wayto the “kulaks’ offensive”: it was the mistakes which had beenmade, said the resolution, that had been exploited by thekulaks and speculators. The resolution consequently stressedthe need to establish “more correct proportions between thedifferent elements in the economy.” 5

(b) The first clashes in the summer of 1928

The resumed application of the emergency measures at thebeginning of the summer of 1928 resulted in a sharp increasein the tension between the two tendencies that existed in thePB. From then on they fought each other harder and harder,each of them trying to win the support of those members of thePB who were still hesitant.

However, it was not in the PB that the first systematiccriticism of the policy actually being followed by the Party’sadministrative organs was formulated. This was done by theCommunist Frumkin, who was assistant commissar of finance.On June 15, 1928, he declared, in a letter addressed to the PB,that the policy applied since the Fifteenth Congress repre-


sented a “new political line in relation to the countryside.” Hesaid that this line was harmful, having “led to lawless actionsagainst the entire peasantry” and aroused anti-Soviet feelingamong the peasants, a feeling which was “already beginningto spread to the working-class centres.” According to Frumkin,the acts of sabotage being committed should be attributedprimarily to the worsening of the internal situation, due topolitical mistakes, and only to a secondary extent to influencesfrom outside.6

The PB decided to circulate Frumkin’s letter to the mem-bers of the CC, following it up with a reply from the PB itself.This reply was composed by Stalin personally, and was sentdirectly to the members of the CC, contrary to the decisiontaken by the PB. Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov, reactingagainst this irregularity, accused Stalin of substituting his in-dividual leadership for the collective leadership of the PB,and treating the PB not as the Party’s highest organ but as amere advisory council attached to the general secretary’soffice. The other members of the PB did not see Stalin’sinitiative in this light, and agreed only to a mild reprimand, inthe form of an admission by the PB that Stalin’s reply toFrumkin had been “incomplete.” 7

This incident was one of the first to indicate, more or lessformally, a serious departure from the principle that leader-ship was the prerogative of the PB. It was the start of a gradualshifting of political authority, which passed increasingly out ofthe hands of the PB and the CC and into those of the generalsecretary. At that stage, however, the decisions taken by thePB and the CC continued to determine, in the main, theconditions governing application of the political line formallydecided on by the Party’s congresses and conferences, or themodifications introduced into this line.

During the summer of 1928 the divergences that developedwithin the PB were not always made explicit to the worldoutside (not even to the CC plenum of July 4–12, 1928). Yetthese divergences were becoming sharper and sharper, andechoes of them even reached the CC. Until the end of theyear, however, the myth of the “unity of the PB” was pre-served.8


At the meetings which preceded the plenum of July 1928serious disagreements were expressed within the PB.9 Bukha-rin and Stalin clashed, coming close to a rupture betweenthem. The former demanded that a general discussion beopened regarding all the problems posed by the procurementcrisis, especially in connection with the tempo of indus-trialization, and Stalin was unwilling to agree to this. Bukharinprepared draft theses for submission to the CC. Stalin said thathe accepted them, but the other members of the PB gave onlypartial approval. To avoid an open rupture, Bukharin acceptedthe text as amended (which, he said, included “nine-tenths” ofhis theses).10 The PB adopted this text unanimously, and sub-mitted it to the CC.

This unanimity was only for show: in fact, the lines advo-cated by Stalin and Bukharin were more and more divergent.In his speech of July 9 Stalin defended the emergency mea-sures and maintained that rapid industrialization would makeit possible to strengthen the alliance with the peasantry. Heexpounded the idea that “the alliance between the workingclass and the peasantry cannot be stable and lasting . . . if thebond based on textiles is not supplemented by the bond basedon metals.” 11

In this speech Stalin brought up the crucial question of howindustrialization was to be financed, and said that there couldbe only “two such sources: firstly, the working class, whichcreates values and advances our industry; secondly, the peas-antry.” 12 Thus for the first time he systematically supported anidea very close to that of “primitive accumulation,” advocatedby Preobrazhensky (whose ideas had previously been con-demned by the Party), namely, that the peasantry must ofnecessity pay relatively high prices for industrial products andbe “more or less underpaid” for their own produce. Stalinexplained: “It is something in the nature of a ‘tribute’, of asupertax, which we are compelled to levy for the time being inorder to preserve and accelerate our present rate of industrialdevelopment, . . . in order to raise further the standard of life ofthe rural population and then to abolish altogether this addi-tional tax, these ‘scissors’ between town and country.”13

In a speech made next day, July 10, Bukharin, while not


openly attacking Stalin’s position, took what was practicallythe opposite view. He stressed the idea that steady indus-trialization could not be achieved without a prosperous ag-riculture, whereas the requisition measures were causing ag-riculture to decline. He asserted that mass discontent wasdeveloping in the villages, which constituted a threat to Sovietpower and risked uniting the middle peasants around thekulaks. While agreeing that the emergency measures had beenneeded in the past, he declared that the CC should abolishthem for the future. Economically, he said, they no longermade any substantial contribution, and politically they wereproducing harsh consequences of a deeply negative character,“bringing us into conflict with the broadest strata of the peas-antry.” He emphasized the need to distinguish clearly be-tween pressure exerted on the kulak, in conformity with theParty’s decisions, and pressure exerted on the middle peasant,which was inadmissible, since it jeopardized the worker-peasant alliance. He warned against the desire to advancesimultaneously in all directions: certain balances ought to bemaintained, through correct planning, and price policy shouldbe improved so as to strengthen the alliance with the peas-antry. Bukharin ended by opposing exaggerated state cen-tralization such as would stifle initiative.14

Tomsky supported Bukharin’s views, as also did Andreyev,who spoke about peasant riots;15 Osinsky, who called for anincrease in the prices paid to the peasants;16 and Rykov, whocriticized the emergency measures. Molotov and Kaganovich,on the other hand, supported the emergency measures and theprice policy which had been followed so far.

The plenum itself learned little of the respective positionsof the two opposing tendencies. The resolution put before itby the PB was apparently more favorable to the theses of the“Right,” coming down in favor of an upward readjustment ofgrain prices and repeating most of Bukharin’s arguments.17

The usual formulations regarding the relation between indus-try and agriculture were repeated, such as this: “While indus-try itself is a powerful drawing-force for agriculture, makingpossible its transformation on the basis of socialist indus-


trialization, agriculture constitutes the foundation for the de-velopment of industry. . . .”18

The resolution emphasized that collective farms must beformed only on a voluntary basis19 and explained the procure-ment crisis mainly by economic imbalances and political mis-takes, which capitalist elements in town and country had beenable to exploit. It acknowledged that revolutionary legality hadbeen violated, arousing protests among the peasants and en-abling “counter-revolutionary elements to spread gossip aboutN.E.P. being abolished.” 20

Altogether, the voting of the resolution on the economicsituation seems to have reflected “victory” for those who weresoon to be denounced as representatives of a “Right devia-tion.” The resolution did indeed embody their principal the-ses. This was how the vote was usually interpreted by personswho were already aware of the existence of a serious conflict oftendencies within the leadership.21

In fact, however, during the plenum of July 1928 the Rightsuffered a defeat. It actually lost ground. The resolutionadopted merely repeated what had already been set forth inthe resolutions of the Fifteenth Congress, while the theory ofthe “tribute” to be levied from the peasantry had not arousedreal objections on the part of the majority in the CC. On thisessential point, the July plenum marked the implicit triumphof a thesis which the future majority in the Party leadershipwould strive to put into effect in order to realize the policyof industrialization which was to be adopted a few months later.

II. The deepening of the split in the Partyleadership in the late summer andautumn of 1928

Immediately after the closure of the plenum the positions ofthe Right were attacked in various ways by their opponents,who developed their offensive first of all on the internationalplane.


(a) The extension of the divergences tointernational questions

The first of these attacks was launched against Bukharinduring the Sixth Congress of the Comintern (July 17–September 1, 1928). As chairman of that organization, Bukha-rin presented the principal reports. These contained an evalu-ation of the situation and prospects in international affairswhich resulted not from the discussions at the July plenumof the CC but from discussions which had not been pub-lished.22 According to echoes from these, and also to sub-sequent discussions, the disagreements between Bukharinand the majority in the CC (which did not emerge publicly atthis time) related to the tactics to be adopted by the Cominternin a situation when a world capitalist crisis was in the offing.

For Bukharin, the development of an economic crisis in theadvanced capitalist countries would not lead directly to aprospect of revolution. He thought that the metropolitan cen-ters imperialism would not experience internal collapse inthe years ahead, and that the center of gravity of the worldrevolution lay in the countries of the East (thereby developingfurther one of the ideas set forth by Lenin in his last writ-ings 23).

Bukharin and his supporters therefore condemned as being“radically wrong, harmful and grossly mistaken from the tacti-cal standpoint” the statement that the crisis of Western cap-italism would prove to be the eve of a revolutionary upsurge.24

Bukharin thought that it was necessary to declare in favor ofunity in the struggle of the working class, and not to launchinto a sectarian line that would result in “isolation” of theCommunist Parties, with a tragic outcome. The characteriza-tion of Social Democracy as “Social-Fascism” 25 seemed to himextremely dangerous: the ideological struggle against theSocial Democratic parties must, of course, lead to their beingdenounced as bourgeois parties, but not to identifying themwith Fascist organizations.

Stalin and the majority at the plenum of July 1928 ap-preciated the situation differently. As they saw it, the


advanced capitalist countries were then on the brink of revolu-tionary upheavals,26 and this dictated three tactical require-ments: (1) refusal of any collaboration with the Social Demo-crats, and the need to create new, revolutionary trade unions,so as to take advantage of the new situation (which corre-sponded to what was called the “third period” 27; (2) destruc-tion of reformist influence over the working class, for in thisnew situation the Social Democratic parties became the mainenemy of the working class; (3) purging of the Communistparties of all vacillating elements, and especially of the “Rightdeviationists,” who, in the existing circumstances, became themain danger within the Communist movement.

In his speeches and in the theses he put before the Comin-tern Congress,28 Bukharin, taking as his point of departure thefact that the Social Democratic parties and the trade unionsunder their influence embraced the immense majority of theEuropean workers, refused to draw a line through these or-ganizations, to regard them as “Social-fascist” and denouncethem as the main enemy of the labor movement. Taking ac-count, however, of attitudes which had been revealed duringthe plenum of July 1928, he made use of a cautious formula-tion: he said that “social-democracy has social-fascist tenden-cies,” but at once added that “it would be foolish to lumpsocial-democracy together with fascism.” He opposed the ideathat Communists might ally themselves with Fascists againstSocialists, saying: “Our tactics do not exclude the possibilityof appealing to social-democratic workers and even to somelower social-democratic organizations, but we cannot appealto fascist organizations.” 29

These formulations were criticized by the delegation of theSoviet Communist Party, which put down a number ofamendments,30 thereby seriously undermining, for the firsttime, Bukharin’s international prestige, and splitting the Con-gress into two tendencies, one “pro-Bukharin” and the other“pro-Stalin.” In fact, Stalin, who was unusually active at thisCongress of the Comintern, came out openly against Bukha-rin.31 He was elected to the Congress Presidium, to the Pro-gram Commission, and to the Political Commissions entrusted


with drawing up the theses on the international situation andthe tasks of the Comintern.

The adoption of important amendments to his theses meant agrave defeat for Bukharin. It revealed that he was in a minorityin the Soviet delegation, so that his standing within his ownparty was lowered. Furthermore, the content of some of theamendments passed was later to be used against Bukharin andhis supporters in the Bolshevik Party.32

(b) The denunciation of a “Right danger”and of a “conciliationist mood” in theBolshevik Party

During the Sixth Congress no mention was made of theexistence of a “Right danger” in the Soviet CommunistParty—only in the foreign sections of the Comintern. On Sep-tember 18, 1928, however, Pravda denounced a “basicallyRight-wing mood” alleged to be present in the Soviet Party. Amonth later, the problem of this “Right danger” was put on theorder of the day by Stalin in a speech delivered on October 19,1928, before the Moscow Party Committee.33

In this speech he still spoke only of a “Right danger,” not ofa deviation in the strict sense. He referred to “a tendency, aninclination that has not yet taken shape, it is true, and isperhaps not yet consciously realised, but nevertheless a ten-dency of a section of the Communist Party to depart from thegeneral line of our Party in the direction of bourgeois ideol-ogy.” 34 Stalin went on to define what this Right tendencyconsisted of, saying that it “underestimates the strength ofour enemies, the strength of capitalism.” This led, he claimed, to areadiness to make concessions to capitalism, to calling for aslowing-down of the pace of development of Soviet industry,to treating the question of collective and state farms as secon-dary, and so on. He linked the existence of this danger withthe fact that “we live in a small-peasant country” and that theroots of capitalism had, therefore, not been torn out, whichimplied “the possibility of the restoration of capitalism in ourcountry.” 35


Stalin said that the danger of a “Left” (Trotskyist) deviationstill existed, but that the Right danger was now more impor-tant, because less obvious. He therefore called for stress to belaid upon the Right danger, though without relaxing the fightagainst the “Left.” Finally, he said that the danger of a Rightdeviation was present in the Party at almost all levels, either inthe form of representatives of this ideological tendency or inthat of a conciliatory mood. The latter, he alleged, had beenshown even in the CC at the July plenum. Nevertheless, “inthe Political Bureau there are neither Right nor ‘Left’ devia-tions nor conciliators towards those deviations. This must besaid quite categorically.” 36

Thus, at the end of 1928, public criticism of Bukharin’spositions began to take shape, although neither he nor Rykovnor Tomsky was attacked by name. Not considering them-selves officially as being the targets aimed at, the three as-sociated themselves with the denunciation of the “Rights”and the “conciliators.” Their position was consequently tobecome practically untenable when they found these epithetsapplied to themselves.

(c) Bukharin’s attempt at a counterattack

All the same, Bukharin did not remain silent at the end of1928. He even tried to counterattack in a long article37 pub-lished in Pravda (which he edited) on September 30, 1928,under the title, “Notes of an Economist.”38

This article constituted an implicit reply to Kuibyshev’sstatements in defense of the new program of industrial de-velopment put forward by the VSNKh, which included a rateof development higher than had been provided for in June. Anincrease of 20.1 percent in gross industrial production wasproposed for 1928–1929, with one-third of all investment allo-cated to the building of new factories. These figures, alreadyvery high, were regarded as inadequate by the leaders ofindustry, whose views Kuibyshev supported: they refused tocontemplate any reduction in industrial investment, despite


the difficult budgetary situation. Kuibyshev accused of “de-featism” those who criticized this program, and he assertedthe need, at all costs, to concentrate investment in heavyindustry, even if this meant provoking economic imbalancesand “discontent and active resistance” on the part of the popu-lation.39

Bukharin vigorously opposed a conception of an indus-trialization to be achieved at the expense of the standard ofliving of the masses and, as he thought, first and foremost, atthe expense of agriculture and of the peasants, thereby de-stroying the foundations of the worker-peasant alliance.Bukharin’s article remained on the terrain of theory and prin-ciples: he did not openly attack any specifically defined “ten-dency” still within the Party, but rather the ideas of theTrotskyist “super-industrializers.” Indeed, his real “politicaltarget” could be recognized only by those, in the leadingcircles of the Party and of the state machine, who were alreadyaware of the discussions that had been going on. At thatperiod, as has been said, this was practically true, also so far asthe “political target” aimed at by the attacks on the “Rightdeviation” was concerned.

In his “Notes of an Economist” Bukharin developed sys-tematically the principle (laid down by the Fifteenth Con-gress) that it was necessary to work out a plan which wouldpermit harmonious development of industry and agricultureand of the different sectors of industry themselves. Accordingto him, this plan must respect certain proportions dictated bythe demands of expanded reproduction of the differentbranches of the economy. It must not give one-sided prefer-ence to one branch at the expense of the others, leaving theseto stagnate, to lag behind or even to regress.

In referring to the demands of expanded reproduction,Bukharin emphasized that if these were not respected, theeconomic and political consequences could be grave. He saidthat, in “the society of the transition period,” account must betaken of the relations shown in the diagrams of Marx’s Capital,volume II, so as to ensure “the conditions for exact co-


ordination of the different spheres of production and con-sumption and of the different branches of production amongthemselves, or, in other words, to establish the conditions for a‘dynamic economic equilibrium.’” And he added: “Seriousmistakes in the direction of the economy, violating the funda-mental proportions of the economy . . . can cause regroupingsof classes to take place which would be extremely unfavorableto the proletariat.” 40

Bukharin described refusal to strive for correct proportionsin the development of the different sectors of the economy as asurrender “to petty-bourgeois indecision: ‘It will work out allright, one way or another—something good will come of it.’ ” 41

Taking up the problem of transferring to industry part ofthe value created in agriculture, he agreed that this could andeven must take place, but he opposed too large a transfer,which would hinder expanded reproduction in agriculture.On this subject he wrote:

Naively, the ideologists of Trotskyism suppose that by squeezingas much as possible each year out of the peasantry so as to investit in industry we could ensure the fastest rate of development forindustry in general. But, clearly, this is not so. The highestpermanent rate of development is to be obtained by a combina-tion in which industry will grow on the basis of an economy inrapid growth. . . . This presupposes that rapid real accumulationcan take place in agriculture, something which is remote fromthe Trotskyist policy. . . . The Trotskyists do not understandthat the development of industry depends on the development ofagriculture.

At the same time Bukharin attacked those whom he called“the petty-bourgeois ‘knights’ who stand forth to forbid ourimposing any burden at all upon the agriculturists for thebenefit of industry,” and whose standpoint was that of “thesurvival of petty economy for ever and ever,” adding thatthese “ideologists of the ‘farmer’ prepare the way for realkulak elements.”

Bukharin concluded: “While the Trotskyists do not under-stand that the development of industry depends on the de-


velopment of agriculture, the ideologists of petty-bourgeoisconservatism do not understand that the development of ag-riculture is dependent on industry. . . .” 42

Concretely, Bukharin accepted the maintenance of invest-ment at the level attained, but not the way this investment wasdistributed. He declared that the future growth of investmentrequired that the situation of agriculture be improved. Forhim, refusal to recognize this requirement meant not realizingthat agriculture was the basis for the actual development ofindustry (as was still acknowledged to be the case in theresolution of the plenum of July 1928). As he saw it, steps mustbe taken quickly to overcome the inadequacy of the produc-tion of grain and of industrial crops (sugar beet, cotton, flax, oilseeds, etc.), and it must be appreciated that the shortage ofindustrial products and raw materials was due to the growth inthe investment of money running ahead of the growth of pro-duction, with the result that industry was lagging behind thedemand engendered by its own rate of expansion. This beingso, to speed up the tempo would merely worsen the shortage and protract the period in which factories were being builtthereby adversely affecting the long-term rate of developmentof the economy as a whole.43

Bukharin therefore wanted an upper limit to be fixed for theexpansion of industrial investment, so that the sums allocatedto industry could be employed in “real” construction. “It isnot possible,” he said, “to build today’s factories with tomor-row’s bricks.” 44 In this connection he denounced what hecalled “a kind of fetishism of money” the effect of which wasthat “people think that, if they have money, they can automat-ically have everything else,” whereas it is material shortagesthat have to be reckoned with at each moment, so as to over-come them in reality.45

The article called for costs of production to be reduceddrastically, through an appeal to the masses combined withthe use of science. In Bukharin’s view, no appeal to the massescould succeed unless “over-centralisation” was renounced,and that meant taking “some steps towards the Commune-State,” together with a struggle against “the elements of a


bureaucratic degeneration absolutely indifferent to the inter-ests of the masses,” so denouncing “functionaries . . . who areready to draw up any sort of plan”—a phrase aimed directly,though without naming them, at the specialists of theVSNKh.46

On the theoretical plane this article amounted, as can beseen, to a systematic onslaught on the increasingly great prior-ity accorded, in a one-sided way, to investment in industry,and on the claim that this priority would make possible thesolving of the problems of agriculture, and particularly that ofgrain procurement. The argument set out showed that, in theimmediate future, such a conception could only worsen theeconomic situation and the tension between the Soviet gov-ernment and the peasantry.

This article of Bukharin’s was far from answering all thequestions that had arisen at that time in the domains of eco-nomics and politics. It had the twofold defect of not showinghow to help the poor and middle peasants to advance alongthe road to collective forms of production (failing to show thedecisive role that ideological and political struggle must playin doing this), and of not defining what concrete measuresmight be taken on the basis of the practical experience of thepeasants themselves. Despite these weaknesses, however, thearticle had the merit that it stressed (referring, moreover, tothe decisions of principle previously taken by the Party) thenecessity of not attacking the standard of living of themasses; of respecting certain objective relations between con-sumption and accumulation, between industry and agricul-ture, and between heavy and light industry; and of not settingtargets which failed to correspond to the material and humanresources available, and which, instead of enabling theeconomy to operate with reserves, actually multiplied shor-tages.

“Notes of an Economist” also indicated the negative conse-quences, from the angle of the class struggle, of failure torespect a number of objective requirements. Yet this articlemade practically no political impact at all: as it attacked, inprinciple, only certain conceptions which had been con-


demned long since—those of the Trotskyists—it did not giverise to any real discussion.

(d) The open offensive against the “Rightdeviation” and the plenum of November1928

At the meeting (November 16–24, 1928) of the plenum ofthe CC an offensive was launched against what was thereafterofficially called the “Right deviation”—without its principalrepresentatives being named as yet. It was still claimed thatthere were no adherents of this deviation in the PB, nor any“conciliators” toward it. This statement conformed, moreover,to a request presented by Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky, whothereby shut the door on any possibility of discussing, clearlyand precisely—at least at the level of the CC—the differentconceptions held and the significance of the resulting di-vergences of view.

From the Trotsky Archives and Kamenev’s notes on his talkswith Bukharin (their meeting on July 11 had been followed byseveral others) we know that, during the meeting of the PBwhich preceded the plenum, Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomskyhad asked Stalin to deny the “baseless rumours” about di-vergences in the PB. They also asked for a general discussionto be opened on the situation in the country. Though givensatisfaction on the first point,47 they were rebuffed on thesecond.

Following this rebuff, and that given to their demand for areduction in the proposals for investments, which they con-sidered to be too large and liable to interfere seriously withthe regular supply of goods to the population, Rykov (who wasthen chairman of the Sovnarkom) and Bukharin wished toresign from the responsible posts they held, so as to dissociatethemselves from the line which had been adopted and whichthey saw as running counter to the decisions of the FifteenthCongress. After a compromise had been reached on somesecondary matters, they withdrew their resignations: had theygone through with them, this would have started a crisis of


leadership and made it very hard to persist with the policythey criticized.

The plenum of November 1928 was dominated by Stalin’sspeech on “Industrialisation of the Country and the RightDeviation in the C.P.S.U.(B.).” 48 This speech contained somepropositions which, though they did not appear word for wordin the draft resolution before the plenum, Stalin consideredwere implicit in this resolution.49 They expressed, in fact, theway in which Stalin, from this time on, was to present theproblem of industrialization and collectivization. We musttherefore examine closely these propositions destined to playsuch a decisive role, for they constituted the initial formula-tion of a new political line which broke with the resolutionspreviously adopted by the Party Congresses and endorsed theactual practice of the economic and administrative organs.

(e) The beginning of a break with theBolshevik Party’s previous line

Two of Stalin’s propositions call for special attention.

(1) Stalin’s view on industrialization andthe expansion of industry producingmeans of production

He considered the key factor in industrialization to be “thedevelopment of the production of the means of production,while ensuring the greatest possible speed of this develop-ment.” 50 This contradicted the resolution of the fundamentalrole of agricultural development in the continuity and mainte-nance of the balanced character of industrialization. By stress-ing development “at the greatest possible speed” of the pro-duction of means of production (which meant heavy industry),he ignored the need to respect certain ratios between thedevelopment of the different branches of the economy: hencehis assertion that what was needed was “the maximum capitalinvestment in industry.”51

This assertion also broke with the resolutions previously


adopted by the Party’s congresses and plenums.52 It wenteven further than what was said in the resolution put beforethe plenum of November 1928 by the PB, which spoke merelyof “the most rapid development possible of the socialist sectorof the economy,” of an “intense rate of development of indus-try,” with the word “maximum” used only in relation to “themobilisation of the Party and of the worker and peasantmasses.”

Subsequently, the idea of the necessity for maximum in-vestment in heavy industry was to be repeated many times, tothe point of affirming that “the basic economic law ofsocialism” was “inseparably linked with the law of prioritydevelopment of industries producing means of production,” 53

this law having allegedly been propounded by Lenin. It istrue that Lenin spoke of the necessity for priority develop-ment of the production of means of production, but when hedid so he was speaking of capitalism. In his polemic with theNarodniks, Lenin referred to this “priority” as being related tothe capitalist forms of uneven development. Under capitalism,he said, “to expand production . . . it is first of all necessary . . .to expand that department of social production which man-ufactures means of production . . . ,” adding that “it is wellknown that the law of development of capital is that constantcapital grows faster than variable capital. . . .” 54

This law of capitalism is a consequence of its contradictions:it tends to develop the productive forces even when this de-velopment keeps coming up against the limits to growth in themasses’ capacity to consume which are set by the striving forprofit.

In Stalin’s speech of November 19, 1928, the problems ofindustrialization and of “development of the production of themeans of production at the greatest possible speed” were notyet presented in terms of a “basic law.” They were consideredfrom the angle of the conditions, both external and internal, inwhich the Soviet Union was then placed.55

Examination of the external conditions, with which Stalinbegan, showed that the USSR was “a country whose technicalequipment is terribly backward,” while being surrounded by


many capitalist countries with much more highly developedindustrial technique. Hence, said Stalin, there was a con-tradiction between the extremely backward technique pos-sessed by the Soviet Union and its soviet system, which was“the most advanced type of state power in the world.” 56 Thiscontradiction must be resolved if the Soviet Union was not tofind itself in a situation with no way out.

Stalin “generalized” the argument by saying that what wasat stake was not only the building of socialism but the defenseof the country’s independence: “economic backwardness,” hesaid, had been “an evil” even before the Revolution—and inthis connection he referred to Peter the Great, who “feverishlybuilt mills and factories” 57 in order to defend Russia.

Developing his argument, Stalin quoted from Lenin’s arti-cle “The Impending Catastrophe And How to Combat It,”written in September 1917. But, although this article doesindeed say that it is necessary to surpass, as quickly as possi-ble, “the economically advanced countries,” it says nothingabout maximum investment in industry or about priority de-velopment for the industries producing means of production.

As regards the “internal conditions” invoked to justify thetempo of industrialization proposed, Stalin abandoned theformula according to which agriculture was the foundation ofthe economy, while industry was its driving force. He now putforward the idea of “industry as the main foundation of ourentire national economy” and of the need to “reconstructagriculture on a new technical basis,” 58 which would requirethe provision of the maximum quantity of instruments andmeans of production. Emphasis was placed here upon techni-cal changes, not on changes in production relations.

(2) Stalin’s view on the reconstruction ofthe technical basis of agriculture

Referring to a speech by Lenin at the Eighth Congress ofSoviets (in December 1920, well before Lenin’s writings oncooperation and material aid to the poor and middle peasants),Stalin expounded the second theme of his speech. This was


the affirmation that the rate of development of agriculture waslagging behind that of industry, and that this fact accounted forthe grain problem, which could be solved only by reconstruct-ing agriculture “on a new technical basis.” 59

Here we observe a constant sliding from consideration ofone type of contradiction to consideration of another type,these two types being: (1) the contradictions arising from theexistence of two social forms of production (state-owned in-dustry, socialist in character, on the one hand, and petty-peasant production, on the other); and (2) the contradictionsdue to the existence of two “technical bases” of production(the up-to-date, large-scale industrial production units, on theone hand, and on the other, “backward” small-scale produc-tion). The argument aimed at justifying development of theindustries producing means of production at the greatest pos-sible speed brought forward as the “principal contradiction”in this domain the existence of two technical bases. Changingthe social forms of production seems here to be subordinate tochanging technique and developing heavy industry.

Yet there is no such subordination. Socialist development ofcollective forms of production is a matter above all of ideologi-cal and political class struggle, not of technique.60 This de-velopment makes it possible in a first phase (as was proved bythe experience of the “spontaneous” forms of collective laborand production which appeared during the NEP) to increaseproduction without providing “new” technical means on amassive scale. Actually, in 1928 a far from negligible increasein production by the poor and middle peasants could havebeen achieved merely by supplying simple instruments oflabor which would not have necessitated huge investments inheavy industry.

More generally, the idea of eliminating as quickly as possi-ble the diversity of the “technical bases” of production doesnot correspond to any objective requirement for the buildingof socialism. This can, on the contrary, be carried out on thebasis of a great diversity of techniques, by “walking on bothlegs,” as they say in China nowadays. Such diversity makes itpossible to advance faster, without any sharp increase in the


rate of investment, and to progress steadily, without excessivestrain, so that increasing mastery of increasingly advancedmeans of production is ensured, in agriculture and industryalike.

The possibilities of technical diversification opened up bysocialism, and the varying forms that can be assumed by mas-tery of technique on the part of the direct producers, weredenied by Stalin in his speech of November 19, 1928. In sodoing he went against the Party’s earlier resolutions andagainst Lenin’s last writings. We see outlined here a path ofeconomic development dominated by expanded production ofmeans of production. It is upon this that the success of collec-tivization is made to depend—collectivization being seen notas the outcome of the struggle of the poor and middle peasantsto free themselves from production relations that oppressthem and make possible their exploitation, but as a technicalchange having the purpose of increasing agricultural produc-tion and, in particular, the marketable part of this productionwhich the state is allowed to acquire at stable and relativelylow prices.61

Thus, Stalin’s speech of November 19, 1928, opened theway to a certain conception of industrialization and of agricul-tural development which enjoyed the approval of the VSNKhand of the leaders of industry. It accorded priority to industryand to heavy industry in the first place, and it made agricul-tural development depend on increased industrial production.

Apparently, however, this path of development was not theonly one considered. Stalin’s speech also assigns great impor-tance in principle to immediate aid to the farms of the poorand middle peasants, to multiplying the links between thesefarms and the trading apparatuses of the state and the coopera-tives (by extending a system of contracts between them, pro-viding for reciprocal obligations) and to increasing forthwiththe supply of goods and credits to these farms. From thisstandpoint, the NEP did not seem to have been abandoned,and transition to collective forms of production remained sub-ject to the explicit wishes of the poor and middle peasants.62

In reality, however, the magnitude of the investments pro-


vided for heavy industry, and the aggravation of the shortageof industrial products supplied to the rural areas which re-sulted from this (especially as regards means of productionsuch as the poor and middle peasants could use), increasinglynegated, at ground level, the intentions expressed regardingaid to be given to the bulk of the peasant producers. Con-sequently, the immediate possibilities of growth in agricul-tural production, and, above all, in grain production, con-tinued to be gravely compromised. Also compromised was thestrengthening of the worker-peasant alliance, for the policythat was pursued in practice tended to demand more and moreproduce from the peasant masses without the necessary mea-sures being taken to increase the supply, in exchange, of theindustrial products that the poor and middle peasants needed.

The adoption by the plenum of the “control figures” for1928–1929,63 and the effort made to put them into effect,giving priority to heavy industry,64 helped to worsen the dis-content which had been gathering in the rural areas since thebeginning of 1928. In this way, a basis was created for a realthreat to the Soviet power, through the dissatisfied peasantsrallying behind the kulaks. At the same time, the possibility ofdrawing the mass of the poor and middle peasants on to thepath of collectivization on a voluntary basis was reducedbecause of the weakening of the Party’s leading role amongthe peasantry.

III. The open split in the Party leadership

During the winter of 1928–1929 the way in which the deci-sions of the plenum of November 1928 were applied, and inwhich the targets of the First Five-Year Plan were defined,confirmed that the basic principles of the NEP were beingincreasingly abandoned. An open split became inevitable, be-tween the positions of Bukharin and his supporters (whowanted to lay down a path of industrialization that wouldremain within the framework of the NEP) and the positions of


those who considered, in fact (if not in words), that rapidindustrialization of the country was now incompatible withmaintenance of the NEP.

The articles, speeches, and declarations of the supporters ofthe two contrasting policies of industrialization resembledless and less a discussion aimed at convincing those who helda different view: debate gave way to polemic, and reciprocalaccusations tended to take the place of arguments and analysisof the concrete situation. It is therefore futile to try to reconsti-tute a “debate” which was no debate. Instead, we must try tobring out those few facts and arguments which, in spite ofeverything, were put forward, on one side or the other, duringthe winter of 1928-1929 and at the beginning of spring 1929,and which enable us to grasp better the political and ideologi-cal meaning of the split which was consummated at theplenum of April 1929.

(a) The positions defended by Bukharinduring the winter of 1928–1929

It was in the winter of 1928–1929 that Bukharin defendedhis positions publicly for the last time, while continuing toexpound his views before the PB and the CC. He was, ofcourse, repeating many of his earlier formulations, but thesewere often articulated in a new way and, on certain points,were more fully elaborated.

One argument frequently advanced by the supporters ofaccelerated industrialization (which was to be carried out “forthe time being” at the expense of agriculture) was that animperialist attack on the Soviet Union was probably immi-nent. Bukharin did not deny that this danger existed. How-ever, his analyses led him to emphasize especially the revolu-tionary role of the peoples of Asia and also to declare that thedecisive factor in the defence of the Soviet Union was itsinternal political situation—in particular, the firmness of theworker-peasant alliance. To take a road which would com-promise this alliance for the sake of promoting a more rapid


industrialization program therefore seemed to him extremelydangerous.65

Bukharin emphasized the conditions for the strengtheningof the worker-peasant alliance, largely repeating the content ofLenin’s last articles, which, he said, set out “a vast long-termplan for all our Communist work. . . .” As Bukharin saw it, thefuture of the revolution depended on a firm and trusting al-liance with the peasantry, and it was essential for the Party toseek to strengthen this alliance through organizational andcultural work that took account of the peasants’ interests. Hewarned against the idea of a “third revolution” which wouldimpose collective forms of production from above. He main-tained that industrialization and accumulation must be carriedout in a way that respected conditions of exchange which wereacceptable to the peasants, through efforts aimed at economyand efficiency. These themes were in conformity with theresolutions of the Fifteenth Congress, but when reaffirmed atthe beginning of 1929 they looked like a criticism of thepolitical line which had been followed de facto for the pastyear. They brought many attacks on Bukharin from the sup-porters of maximizing investment in heavy industry. One ofthese, Postyshev, described Bukharin as a “vulgar peasantphilosopher.” 66

In the same period as Bukharin’s articles were publishedthere appeared in Pravda, on January 20, 1929, an article byNadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s widow, entitled “Lenin and theBuilding of Collective Farms.” Recalling the decisive placegiven by Lenin to the development of cooperation and theformation of collective farms, she emphasized that he had saidthat the peasants ought not to be forced to take the path ofcooperation and collective farming against their will. She re-called also the importance ascribed by Lenin to Engels’ articlepublished in Die Neue Zeit in 1894 (“The Peasant Question inFrance and Germany”), in which he said that socialism wouldnot expropriate the peasant but would help him to go over tocooperation and communes by using the power of example,and showing all the patience needed. In conclusion, she saidthat she thought it stupid to try and upset “from above” the


economic relations in which the middle peasant was involved,and to resort to measures of coercion in order to do so.

This article of Krupskaya’s came as a reply to those amongthe supporters of absolute priority for heavy industry whowere declaring themselves increasingly in favor of forced col-lectivization. Krupskaya defended, on this point, the samepositions as Bukharin.

The latter’s public statements accounted for only part of hiswriting at that time. He also prepared a “platform” destinedfor the PB. He read this at the meeting of the PB held onJanuary 30, 1929, and came under violent attack from theadvocates of the speediest possible development of heavyindustry. His position, which was supported by Rykov andTomsky, did not apparently give rise to a genuine fundamen-tal discussion. A few days earlier (on January 20, the day whenTrotsky was expelled from the Soviet Union), a clandestineTrotskyist sheet had published a report of the talks betweenBukharin and Kamenev, and it was essentially Bukharin’sconduct—described as “factional”—that was attacked by hisopponents.67

All that we know of the “platform” presented by Bukharinon January 30 and of the declaration made by the “three” onFebruary 9 are a few quotations—which, nevertheless, enableus to reconstitute the bulk of what they said during that ses-sion of the PB.

One of the reproaches addressed by the three to the execu-tive organs related to their failure to observe the decisionstaken by the Fifteenth Congress and by the plenums of the CCregarding help to the farms of the poor and middle peasants.The notion of industrialization based on a “tribute” to belevied from the peasantry was also subjected to systematiccriticism. The tribute idea entailed, as the three saw it, the riskthat it could lead to “military-feudal exploitation of the peas-antry.” These terms were reproduced and condemned in thePB resolution of February 9.68 In the report he presented tothe plenum of April 1929 Stalin was to defend the idea of thetribute, while maintaining that it was inconceivable for thepeasantry to be “exploited” in the Soviet Union.69


Bukharin considered it necessary to develop collectivefarming, but he refused to see this process as dependent onmeasures of coercion aimed primarily at using it as a means toserve an industrialization policy which assigned very highpriority to heavy industry. Bukharin stressed that develop-ment of collective farming must be associated with a realideological struggle, and he recalled, in this connection, whatLenin had written on the necessity of a cultural revolution.

Bukharin’s opposition to the levying of a tribute from thepeasantry as the basis for industrialization was bound up, firstand foremost, with his conception of the worker-peasant al-liance, which, he considered, must be based on a policy ofsystematically reducing the gap between the standard of liv-ing of the peasant masses and that of the working class. Thisattitude of his was inspired also by his view that importantsources for accumulation and industrial development existedelsewhere than in agriculture. What was referred to here was,especially, the possibility of cutting down the size of theadministrative machinery of the state, through greater decen-tralization and the freeing of local initiative that would makepossible “real participation by the real masses” (as Lenin putit) in developing the productive forces.70 Yet Bukharin did notreally ask himself why what he was advocating had not actu-ally been done, although this same line had long figured in theParty’s resolutions. Formulating this question would have ob-liged him also to question himself regarding the social forcesand social relations which obstructed the actual execution ofsome of the Party’s decisions, and the forms of struggle thatwould make it possible to break through these obstacles: but,then, men never pose problems to themselves for which theycannot find solutions.

At the meetings of the PB in March and at the beginning ofApril 1929, held to prepare the plenum of the CC on April16–23 and the Sixteenth Party Conference on April 23–29,Bukharin and Rykov put forward counterproposals to the draftof the Five-Year Plan which had been submitted to the PB.This draft provided for investment in the state sector to be


multiplied by three or four, depending on the variant, and for80 percent of this investment to be destined for heavy indus-try. Their counterproposals were rejected, together with adraft plan submitted by Rykov which aimed at developingagriculture, seen as the basis for industrial development. Afterthis plan had been rejected, Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomskyabstained from taking part in the vote by which the PB gave itsapproval to the industrial provisions of the Five-Year Plan.

At the same time as they criticized the economic concep-tions of the advocates of one-sided priority for the develop-ment of heavy industry and of financing this development by amassive transfer of resources from agriculture to industry, thethree, and Bukharin in particular, also criticized the develop-ments that were going on in the superstructure. Their criti-cism related to the distention of the state apparatus and theincrease in it that could be foreseen if collectivization was notcarried out voluntarily but so as to serve as a device for extract-ing a tribute from agriculture.71

Bukharin also criticized various aspects of the way the Partyfunctioned. His arguments concerned primarily the content ofthe discussions that were held in the Party—these, he said,dealt mainly with internal problems of organization, instead ofanalyzing the concrete situation and systematically consultingthe masses:

Problems of great seriousness are not even discussed. Theentire country is deeply concerned about the grain problem, andthe problem of food supplies. Yet the conferences of the proleta-rian party in power remain silent. The whole country feels thatall is not well with the peasantry. Yet our Party conferences saynothing. . . . This policy fails to face up to the real difficulties, it’sno kind of policy at all. The working class must be told the truthabout the situation, we must take account of the needs of themasses, and in our management of their affairs we must identifyourselves with the masses.72

The stress laid on Soviet democracy, on the role of themasses, and on organizing the supervision that the massesshould exercise over the various apparatuses, corresponded to


a long-standing preoccupation of Bukharin’s. This wasreaffirmed in an article he published in Pravda on December2, 1928, and in his speech on “Lenin’s political testament,” inwhich he called for multiplication of “all possible forms ofassociation by the working people so as at all costs, to avoidbureaucratisation,” and to ensure that the Party knew thefeeling of the masses and their reasons for discontent. Thisattitude of Bukharin’s was later to be charged against him asshowing a tendency to bow before “the backwardness anddiscontent of the masses.” 73

Bukharin’s argument was also aimed at what he regarded asthe development of a sort of blind discipline in the Party. Hecalled on Party members “to take not a single word on trust . . .to utter not a single word against their conscience.” He ap-pealed to Bolshevism’s tradition of critical thought.74 ForBukharin there was a connection between the tendency togive up critical thought and what he saw as the gradual disap-pearance of collective leadership by the CC, in favor of thegrowing concentration of authority in the hands of one man.

This challenge to the type of discipline practiced in theParty was rejected by the majority of the PB, who insisted onthe need for “iron discipline” and emphasized the weakpoints in the positions of the three. The absence of a suf-ficiently precise statement of how they conceived the condi-tions for transition to collective forms of agricultural produc-tion, their tendency to lay special stress on the economic formsof the worker-peasant alliance (based on the supply of con-sumer goods to the villages), their reservations regarding therole of the agricultural tax imposed on the well-to-dopeasants—all these features made it easy to identify the posi-tions of the three with defense of the status quo of the NEP, oreven with defense of the interests of the kulaks. And themajority in the PB resolved to take that step. They also blamedBukharin and Sokolnikov for their contacts with Kamenev, andBukharin for publishing in the press writings which had notbeen previously discussed by the PB. These actions wereconsidered as amounting to factional activity.


(b) The condemnation of the positions ofBukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky by the PBand by the plenum of the CC and theCCC

All these accusations and reprimands were summed up in adraft resolution for submission to the PB and to the Presidiumof the CCC. However, a commission of the CC was given thetask of composing a “compromise” document: if the threevoted for this, the draft resolution would be withdrawn. Ac-ceptance of this compromise by the three75 would have im-plied Bukharin’s withdrawal of his resignation from his postsat Pravda and in the Comintern. On February 7, the threerefused to vote for it and decided to keep their resignations inforce until the April plenum (Rykov alone was subsequently togo back on this decision).

This action meant a complete break between the three andthe majority in the PB. Stalin, in particular, saw the threethenceforth as constituting a “distinct group” whom he ac-cused of opposing the Party line and wanting to “compel theParty . . . to stop fighting against the Right deviation.” In hisspeech to the April plenum, Stalin declared that it was notpossible to tolerate “in our own ranks, in our own Party, in thepolitical General Staff of the proletariat . . . the free function-ing of the Right deviators, who are trying to demobilise theParty [and] demoralise the working class,” for that would“mean that we are ready . . . to betray the revolution.” 76

The PB majority passed a resolution on “the internal affairsof the Party” 77 and ratified a resolution dealing with the samematters which had been voted on February 9 by the PB andthe Presidium of the CCC.78 These documents condemnedBukharin’s criticisms in “Notes of an Economist” as beinggroundless, “eclectic,” and calculated to “discredit the line ofthe CC.” They also condemned, for the same reasons, Bukha-rin’s declaration of January 30, 1929, and what was said abouthis positions in the notes taken by Kamenev. In its conclu-sions, however, the resolution of the plenum laid specialstress upon the hesitations of Bukharin and Tomsky in rela-


tion to the “new” line, and upon the need to safeguard Partyunity. In contrast to the severer criticisms of Bukharin ex-pressed in Stalin’s speech,79 the plenum resolution did notaccuse the three of being Right deviationists. It spoke of their“de facto solidarity” with the opportunist tendencies in theComintern and the role of “centre of attraction played objec-tively” by the three where those tendencies were concerned.Later on, the same resolution spoke of a “convergence onbasic questions between the positions of the ‘three’ and thoseof the Right deviation.” 80

These formulations implied that the political positions ofthe three and those of the Right deviation did not fully coin-cide. The practical consequence of this was that the three kepttheir membership in the PB, even though they had not agreedto vote for the compromise document of February 7. Theresolution forbade the three to give any public expression totheir disagreements, thereby imposing new limits to theideological struggle, which was being allowed to take placeonly inside an ever narrower circle.

While refusing to accept the resignation of Bukharin andTomsky, the plenum relieved them of their posts, at Pravdaand in the Comintern in the case of Bukharin, and in thetrade-union leadership in the case of Tomsky.81 The three hadsuffered a heavy defeat, and one that was to prove final.

The resolution of the PB which was ratified-by the plenumalso included a series of criticisms of the three. In particular, itrejected Bukharin’s analysis of the economic situation. It de-clared that the supply of goods to the rural areas was betterthan in the previous year, and that procurement was proceed-ing in a way that could be regarded as satisfactory. 82 Thisappreciation of the situation had nothing in common withreality. Except during two months, the procurement of grainin the first half of 1929 fell far below the figure for theprevious year: for these six months as a whole it came to 2.6million metric tons, as against 5.2 in 1928. 83 Besides, theseresults had only been obtained by bringing strong administra-tive pressure to bear on the middle peasants, which had givenrise, in a number of regions, to open expressions of discontent


by broad strata of the peasantry. The grain shortage whichthen developed brought about a considerable rise in the mar-ket price of grain, and there were cases of speculation.84 Theplenum of April 1929 willfully ignored these realities, and thatwas to have serious effects later on, both economic and politi-cal.

(c) Stalin’s speech at the plenum of April1929

The bulk of this speech85 was devoted to criticizing thepositions of the three. In close connection with this critiqueStalin put forward certain theses86 to which we must nowturn.87

(1) The intensification of the class struggle

The first thesis concerned the intensification of the classstruggle “at the present stage of development and under thepresent conditions of the relation of forces.” 88 It was thus not a“general thesis” but a formulation aimed at characterizing theconjuncture of a particular moment.

This characterization was correct, yet inadequate, for it wasnot derived from a many-sided analysis of the conjuncture.Thus, Stalin declined to explain the intensification of thebourgeois class struggle by the mistakes made by the Party inits handling of the problems of the poor and middle peasantry,as a result of the weakening of the machinery of the dictator-ship of the proletariat and of its connections with the masses.As he saw it, any analysis of the situation which took accountof such factors amounted to trying to attribute the intensifica-tion of the class struggle to “causes connected with the charac-ter of the apparatus,” 89 or to saying that what had been “good”last year had suddenly become “bad” 90 (for he denied thatthere had been any change in this matter during the interven-ing period).

Restricting in this way his analysis of the causes of theintensification of the class struggle amounted to focusing one-


sided attention upon the attempts made by the adversaries ofthe dictatorship of the proletariat, without examining what itwas, in the disposition of the latter’s forces, that enabled theseadversaries to transform their attempts into effective coun-teroffensives. Whether they could do this or not depended onthe firmness of the bonds between the working class and itsallies, and on the political line of the Party. What the analysisleft out was therefore the main thing, the political line and itscontradictions: this prevented correct treatment of these con-tradictions and speedy introduction of the necessary rectifica-tions.

(2) The problem of the “tribute” and of thepossibility of the peasantry beingexploited by the Soviet state

The second thesis set out in this speech of April 1929 wasthat of the need to impose upon the peasantry “something inthe nature of a tribute,” so as to make possible industrializa-tion of the Soviet Union.91

In the general way in which it was presented, this thesis wasboth true and false. It was true in the sense that, in the con-crete conditions in which the Soviet Union was placed, noindustrialization of any magnitude was possible unless thepeasantry made a certain contribution92 to the effort of indus-trial development.

Formulated, however, in so general a fashion, this thesiscould open the way for a wrong policy, one entailing graveconsequences, for it was not accompanied by any indication ofthe limits which this tribute must not exceed if it was not tojeopardize the worker-peasant alliance and the requirementsfor expanded reproduction in agriculture. The facts were notslow in revealing that these limits were being exceeded.

The negative consequences of the “tribute” thesis set forthin these general terms were enhanced decisively by the link-ing of this thesis with another, false one, namely, the assertionthat “the very nature of the Soviet regime precludes any sortof exploitation of the peasantry by the state.”93


Such a formulation did not allow for either the contradic-tory nature of the Soviet state (a state of the working class butalso a “bourgeois state,” as Lenin put it, in so far as it ensuredthe reproduction of certain bourgeois relations, particularly onthe plane of distribution), or for the presence of bourgeoiselements in the Soviet state machine. Yet these factors couldconstitute the objective conditions for despoiling and exploit-ing the peasants (and the workers, too, for that matter) anddrive the peasantry into opposition to the Soviet power. Thisformulation of Stalin’s was therefore a step backward as com-pared with Lenin’s.

(3) The “new forms of the bond” and the“technical basis” for increasingagricultural production

Stalin’s speech at the plenum of April 1929 set forth a thesisof the necessity for “new forms of the bond between town andcountry.” These new forms were to involve the supplying byindustry of means of production to agriculture—agriculturalmachinery, tractors, fertilizers, etc.—for, now, “it is a questionof reconstructing agriculture,” reorganizing agricultural pro-duction “on the basis of new technique and collectivelabour.” 94

This thesis developed and sharpened the contrast whichhad been made up to that time between a worker-peasantalliance based on textiles and that based on steel. The pros-pect which it opened up certainly corresponded to futureneeds, but the formulations used gave rise to a series of prob-lems, and the following in particular:

(a) Even at the end of the NEP period the “restoration” ofagriculture was far from having been completed. Millions ofsmall- and medium-sized farms still lacked the most elemen-tary instruments of production.95 In practice, this meant that itwas still possible to help the poor and middle peasants tobring about a rapid increase in agricultural production in re-turn for modest investments, and without having to wait forthe building of new steelworks, new tractor factories, and so


on. The problem of waiting periods and rates of progresstherefore did not really arise in the terms in which it wasformulated at the plenum of April 1929.96

(b) According to Stalin, the period of “restoration” was onewhich had to be a period when what predominated was a formof the worker-peasant alliance aimed at satisfying “mainly thepersonal requirements of the peasant, hardly touching theproductive requirements of his economy.” 97 True, this washow the alliance had been practiced, but that practice hadbeen mistaken: from the very beginning of the NEP, supply-ing the peasant farms with means of production, even if onlyrudimentary ones, should have been a priority task, as Leninhad said. The alliance based mainly on textiles had not helpedthe poor and middle peasants to free themselves from domina-tion by the rich ones.

(4) Mechanization and collectivization

Stalin’s speech presented collectivization as having beennecessitated by technical changes and by the need for in-creased marketable production. The development of collec-tive production in agriculture did not appear as a form of classstruggle but as a technical and economic necessity.

What was stressed was “the danger of a rift between townand country” due to the inadequate rate of growth in agricul-ture as compared with industry, from which Stalin drew theconclusion that, “in order to eliminate this danger of a rift, wemust begin seriously re-equipping agriculture on the basis ofnew technique. But in order to re-equip it we must graduallyunite the scattered individual peasant farms into large statefarms, into collective farms.” 98

In this conception, which was the one that eventually pre-vailed, the aspirations and needs of the poor and middle peas-ants were not the main consideration. It was the needs of thetowns and of industry that dictated the technical conditions ofagricultural production and these, in turn, that dictated itssocial conditions. We may well wonder why such a concep-tion took shape (I shall return to this question when I deal


with the changes in the Bolshevik ideological formation), butwhat is certain is that its implementing explains why collec-tivization was carried out in the way it was, and also its “coun-terproductive” consequences—a setback to agricultural pro-duction instead of an advance.

(5) Mechanization and industrialization

The thesis of the urgent need for a technical transformationof agriculture having been laid down, that of the need for rapidindustrialization could be “deduced” therefrom: “it will beimpossible to supply the countryside with machines andtractors unless we accelerate the development of our indus-try.99

Here Stalin argues in a circle: agriculture must be rapidlysupplied with up-to-date equipment so that it does not lagbehind industry, and industry’s rate of development must beaccelerated so that it may rapidly provide the equipment foragriculture. Illusory movement around this circle was whatcompelled the continual readjustment upward of the targets ofthe First Five-Year Plan.

(6) The procurement crisis of 1928–1929and the relations between classes

In Stalin’s speech at the plenum of April 1929 the difficul-ties experienced in grain procurement were explained essen-tially by the alleged “economic strengthening” of the kulaks.Having asked what were the causes of these difficulties, Stalinanswered himself with the following formulation: “Duringthese years the kulak and well-to-do elements have grown, theseries of good harvests has not been without benefit to them,they have become stronger economically; they have accumu-lated a little capital and now are in a position to manoeuvre inthe market.” 100

Unfortunately, this “economistic” explanation of the pro-curement crisis begs some questions: (a) When was this “se-cries of good harvests”? The last good harvest had been that of


1926. (b) Starting in early 1928, it had been necessary toemploy emergency measures, and the exhaustion of the grainstocks held by the rich peasants had, as the Party leadershipadmitted, compelled the extension of these measures so thatthey affected the middle peasants. This being so, how couldthe “capital” held by the kulaks in 1929 be larger (in the form ofgrain, at any rate) than it had been in 1927?

In reality, if the position of the kulaks had indeed beenstrengthened between 1927 and 1929, this was because theirideological and political influence had grown.

And this growth in the kulaks’ influence was due to themistakes made by the Party in its peasant policy. Any examina-tion of these mistakes, however, such as would have beennecessary if they were to be eliminated, was ruled out fromthe start in Stalin’s speech. When he mentioned the procure-ment difficulties, he asked: “Perhaps the policy of the CentralCommittee is responsible for this?” only to answer himselfwith an unproved assertion: “No, the policy of the CentralCommittee has nothing to do with it.” 101

This last formulation—which contradicted everything thathad been admitted in 1928—made it necessary to “explain”the procurement crisis by an economic strengthening of thekulaks, and prevented any correction of the policy followed,since this was held to “have nothing to do with” the situation.

Stalin’s speech at the April plenum was of quite specialimportance. On the one hand, the theses contained in it, evenwhen they were inadequate, or contradicted reality, were notsubjected to any systematic criticism: the ideological cam-paign waged during the period preceding the plenum wassuch that any questioning of these theses was immediatelyrepudiated as constituting a “pro-kulak” position, and the de-velopment of a real movement of criticism and self-criticism,which would presuppose respect for democratic centralism,was consequently blocked. On the other hand, these theseswere the point of departure for a new turn in the Party line, aturn toward the road of an accelerated industrialization theburdens of which were to be borne by the peasantry. This was


confirmed (though still in hesitant fashion) by the SixteenthParty Conference, which led to the “great change” effected atthe end of 1929.

IV. The Sixteenth Party Conference (April23–29, 1929) and its consequences

The Sixteenth Party Conference saw a last attempt atstrengthening socialist relations while basically remainingwithin the framework of the NEP and laying the foundationsfor transition to a higher stage. The decisions it took aretherefore of considerable interest, even if the prospect out-lined by this conference failed to materialize. The contradic-tory character of some of these decisions, and the rapid coursetaken by the class struggle, meant that, a few months after theSixteenth Conference, the Party leadership was faced with achoice—either to renounce some of the economic (especiallyindustrial) targets defined in April 1929, or to try and realizethese targets by taking economic and political measures otherthan those provided for by that conference (including brusqueabandonment of the NEP).

The second of these roads was the one that was followed. Itwas to take the Soviet Union into a wholly new era, before theconditions had matured for mastering many of the new andimmense problems it presented.

Analysis of the principal aspects and decisions of the Six-teenth Conference enables us to see more clearly the condi-tions that made it seem possible, in April 1929, to reconcilemaintenance of the NEP with the launching of a process ofrapid social and economic changes. This analysis, togetherwith examination of the concrete situation at that time, canalso enable us to see the contradictory character of the deci-sions taken by the Sixteenth Conference, and some of thereasons which explain why these contradictions were “re-solved” during the second half of 1929 in the sense which hasbeen mentioned.


(a) The condemnation of the politicalpositions of the “three”

One of the characteristic features of the Sixteenth Confer-ence was the way that the problem of political divergenceswithin the PB was dealt with. These divergences, despitetheir importance and the seriousness of the questions theyraised, were not gone into in a fundamental way.

It was only on the eve of the closure of the conference, and“at the request of the delegates,” that Molotov gave a report onthe work of the plenum which had just been held. He then putdown a short resolution which “noted” that “the Bukharingroup” had departed from the Party’s general line and waspursuing a “Right deviation.” This resolution was adoptedwithout discussion. Though it approved the decision taken byhe CC regarding “the Bukharin group”102 it was not includedin the report of the Sixteenth Conference published in 1929:nor did this report include those passages in delegates’speeches in which they attacked Bukharin.103

For several months yet, the existence of profound di-vergences within the PB was still kept secret. Rykov was evenincluded among those entrusted with presenting a report tothe Sixteenth Conference on the Five-Year Plan, and he con-tinued to serve as chairman of the Sovnarkom.104

The lack of a broad discussion dealing with the opposingpolitical positions did not help to clarify the situation, and, inparticular, to distinguish between what, in the positions of thethree, might properly be called a Right deviation and whatmight be correct views.

The reasons why no real discussion was ever held havenever been given. It may be supposed that desire to demon-strate the “unity” of the PB was the decisive factor, sincesuch a discussion was sought neither by the majority nor by thethree. Nobody wanted to risk a split in the Party. While themajority in the PB enjoyed the support of a section of theproletariat in large-scale industry and of many of the leaders ofeconomic and industrial organizations, the positions of thethree were backed by a high proportion of the Party members


working in the countryside, by many trade-union cadres, andby a section of the workers in the consumer-goods industries,especially in the textile mills.105 It should be added that, thegreater the tension in the rural areas became, the moredangerous it seemed to allow the Party leadership to seemdivided, since open resistance to the “emergency measures”might then develop among the peasantry.

At all events, the absence of a genuine discussion made itimpossible for the respective positions to be clarified, withidentification of what was and what was not correct in thetheses of the two sides. This being so, the contradictions in theresolutions of the Sixteenth Conference were not analyzed,either. Thereafter that tendency prevailed which accordedone-sided priority to heavy industry and ignored the demandsof the worker-peasant alliance. Significantly, some of the supp-orters of the former opposition, especially the Trotskyistsamong them, considered that the line of the Sixteenth Confer-ence was such that they could ask to be readmitted to theParty—though Trotsky, from his exile abroad, condemned thismove.106

(b) The fight against “bureaucracy”

An important aspect of the Sixteenth Conference was itsplacing on the agenda “the fight against bureaucracy.” Theconference linked this question closely with that of the econo-mic and social changes to be brought about, with collectiviza-tion and industrialization. A connection was thus made be-tween radical transformation of the state machine (rev-olutionizing of the superstructures) and success in socialisttransformation of the economic basis.

The resolution adopted on this subject by the SixteenthConference sought to define some of the requirements whichmust be satisfied if a real breakthrough by the masses into theactivity of the soviets and the administrative bodies was to beachieved, and resistance to the revolutionary changes over-come in this way. It denounced the harmful political conse-


quences of the manner in which the state apparatusfunctioned. Thus, the resolution in question107 declared:

The struggle by the Party and the Soviets against bureaucraticperversion of the machinery of state, which often conceals fromthe broad masses of the working people the actual nature of theproletarian state, constitutes one of the most important forms ofthe class struggle.

The tremendous tasks laid down by the Five-Year Plan . . .cannot be accomplished without a decisive improvement in themachinery of state, without simplifying it and reducing its costwithout precise execution of their respective tasks by each linkin the chain, without decisive overcoming of inertia, red-tape,bureaucratic suppression, mutual ‘covering-up’ and indifferenceto the needs of the working people. . . .108

The contradiction between the magnitude of the tasks andthe agrarian and technological changes laid down by theFive-Year Plan and the way the bureaucratic apparatusfunctioned was thus clearly appreciated. Nevertheless, theideological conditions for revolutionary transformation of themachinery of state were left imprecise. The questions raisedby such a transformation were approached, mainly from theangle of organization, and this was not adequate for showingthe path whereby the initiative of the masses could succeed insmashing the tendency of the apparatuses to dominate themand to function in a bourgeois rather than a proletarian way.

On the plane of organization, the resolution of the SixteenthConference stressed mainly the following points:109

(1) Checking up on the execution of the Party’s politicalline. The resolution recalled what Lenin had said about thestate machine often working “against us”110—which testifiedto how little improvement had been made in this situationsince Lenin’s death. It suggested, among other measures, thatincreased scope be given to rank-and-file control commis-sions, stating that “these commissions must be elected di-rectly in the factories and workshops and by the Soviets of thecorresponding towns.” 111

(2) Improvement in the composition of the personnel of thestate machine, and introduction of a system of leadership cor-


responding to the economic system and to the demands of thebuilding of socialism112—these were two themes which werealso emphasized in this resolution of the Sixteenth Confer-ence. The indications given for realizing these aims were,however, vague and even contradictory. There were a numberof considerations regarding “decentralization of leadershipfunctions,” “personal leadership,” labor discipline, and “ac-tive participation by the masses in leadership,” without itbeing made clear which of these were of principal importanceand which were secondary. This resulted from the presence ofcontradictory tendencies: one favoring reinforcement of theexisting organs of leadership and the other favoring broaderintervention by the masses in the drawing up of plans and thetaking of decisions.

Finally, this part of the resolution seems to have beendominated above all by concern to obtain “economic” results:rationalization of the production apparatus, increased produc-tivity of labor, cutting down of the unproductive departmentsand services in the enterprises, reduction in the costs of thestate trading apparatus, and so on.

(c) The organization of supervision by themasses

The organization of supervision by the masses occupied acentral position in this resolution, which called upon the non-Party workers and peasants to learn to make use of therights which the Soviet Republic guaranteed them—for, as theresolution said, “any fight against bureaucracy which is notbased upon the activity and initiative of the working class, butseeks to substitute for supervision by the workers and peas-ants themselves the activity of some apparatus or other isdoomed, however good its intentions, to produce no seriousresult as regards real improvement in and fundamental recon-struction of the machinery of state.” 113

The resolution then listed various experiments which hadalready been made114 and urged that these be learned from.Nevertheless, it did not analyze why these experiments had


produced such limited results, and nothing was said aboutwhat should be done to ensure that things would be differentin future.

“The tasks of the fight against elements of bureaucracy inthe Party and in the state machine” were also dealt with inthe resolution.115 This part of the document was, in principle,one of the most important, for it tried to define the road lead-ing to reversal of the trend which had separated the Party fromthe masses and caused the latter to hesitate to criticize theParty and Party members, as Stalin had observed in his reportto the plenum of April 1928.

In that report Stalin had noted that, because of the growingprestige of the Party leadership, “the masses begin to look upat [the leaders] from below and do not venture to criticizethem”—which “cannot but give rise to a certain danger of theleaders losing contact with the masses and the masses gettingout of touch with the leaders,” so that the latter are in dangerof “becoming conceited and regarding themselves as infallible. . . . nothing can come of this but the ruin of theParty.” 116

The resolution spoke of the need for developing criticismfrom below, without respect of persons, so as to eliminatebureaucratized elements and those who were connected withthe kulak and capitalist elements still present in the country;of the need to combat violations of democracy in the Party, tohold elections in order to remove those who had lost thesympathy of the masses and contact with them, and to resistthe tendency of leading bodies to substitute themselves forthe organs they were supposed to lead (e.g., usurpation by thepresidiums of soviets of the functions of the soviets them-selves).117

This resolution, the principal terms of which I have sum-marized, therefore presented as a condition for the building ofsocialism a fundamental reorganization of the machinery ofstate and of the way that this functioned. It revealed that whathad already been said on this subject over several years hadremained more or less inoperative. Reading this document,we can see, too, that there was great uncertainty regarding the


targets to be aimed at. Were they, first and foremost, increased“efficiency” in the machinery of state? Or did they consist intransforming this machinery in revolutionary fashion so thatnew proletarian political relations might develop? The resolu-tion gave no clear answer to this question—or, rather, thisquestion was hardly raised in it. It could therefore not give aprecise answer to the concrete problems of the road to befollowed in order to transform the machinery of state: hencethe juxtaposition in it of various recommendations the relativepriority of which was not indicated.

In practice, during the months that followed the adopting ofthis resolution, the tasks laid down in the sphere of indus-trialization were amplified, and the pace at which these targetswere to be reached was speeded up. Thereafter, most atten-tion was focused upon economic questions, while the prioritywhich had been accorded to the requirements for transformingthe machinery of state was lost sight of. The few changes thatwere carried out, all the same, were carried out from above,which did not fail to bring with it some negative conse-quences, and in particular to reduce, instead of increasing, theplace accorded to intervention and supervision by the masses.

(1) The need to purge the Party, and itssignificance

The Sixteenth Conference formally decided on a Partypurge.118 This operation was bound up with the attempt torecast the state machine, but also with the general crisis of theNEP and the fight against Right deviation. The conferencerecalled that the purge to be undertaken would be the firstgeneral purge since the one carried through in 1921, at theoutset of the restoration period.119

Between 1922 and 1929 there had indeed been only partialpurges,120 connected with the regular activity of the CCC.121

The decision of the Sixteenth Conference, however, aimed atan operation of an exceptional and general character.

A few days before he placed before the Sixteenth Confer-ence the theses on purging the Party, with the corresponding


resolution, Yaroslavsky gave a report on these questions to aconference of the Moscow Party organization. His report wasespecially severe in what it said about the rural Party organiza-tions. He also criticized those factory workers who had kepttheir ties with the village, for, he said, these workers looked ontheir work in industry merely “as a means of enriching theirfarms.” He stressed that the purge must be effected onideological lines, every member being judged “from thestandpoint of the accomplishment of the tasks of the classstruggle. At the same time, he warned against “inquisitorialmethods,” “enquiries among neighbors,” etc.122

The theses on the purge were examined by the SixteenthConference only on the last day of its discussions. The corre-sponding instructions for the local control commissions weredispatched even before this examination had been under-taken. The resolution on the purge did not give rise, therefore,to any real debate. Nevertheless, the interruptions made bycertain delegates show that a section of the conference fearedthat this purge would serve principally to restrict discussion inthe Party. However, the resolution was passed unanim-ously.123

The policy of purging the Party was inspired by the ideaswhich underlay the resolution on the fight against “bureau-cracy.” Several paragraphs of that resolution concerned theParty itself, and deserve to be mentioned here. The followingparagraph is especially noteworthy.

The conference draws the attention of the whole Party and ofevery Party member individually to the need to wage the mostresolute, the most determined, the most persevering struggleagainst elements of bureaucracy in the Party itself, in the Partyapparatus: these elements result from the many ties between theParty apparatus and the soviets, from the involvement of a verylarge number of Party members in administrative work, andfrom the influence exerted upon Communists working in thestate machine by elements belonging to the bourgeois intel-ligentsia and to the corps of officials.124

This paragraph is remarkable because of the importance itascribes to the fight against “bureaucracy” in the Party; but alsobecause of the limited character of the reasons it gives for the


existence of this phenomenon which restricted the practicalsignificance of the methods recommended for struggle againstit. Problems of the division of labor and of participation by thecadres in productive work were thus not put in the center ofthe analysis of what constituted, in reality, the development ofbourgeois political practices.

The measures proposed were difficult to apply. However,the list of the principal measures which was given illustratesthe way in which the Party worked on the eve of the “greatchange,” and also the attempts made to modify this way ofworking so as to reduce the “bureaucratization” of the Party.

Among these measures was reduction in the number of paidParty functionaries and their replacement, wherever possible,by a group of especially active Party members (the Party “ac-tivists”). These should form, in every factory, locality, admin-istration, etc., where they were sufficiently numerous, an or-ganization called the Party’s aktiv. Organizations like this didindeed develop in 1929, but without, apparently, causing areal reduction in the number of functionaries on the Party’spayroll.125 The extent of any such reduction would, in anycase, not have been obvious, for a very large proportion of theParty cadres held jobs in the state machine and were paid inthat capacity.126

The resolution on the Party purge also mentioned the needto fight against violations of democracy within the Party, so asto eliminate “bureaucratized” elements who had lost the con-fidence of the masses. It linked changing the Party’s style ofwork and its makeup, on the one hand, with correct fulfillmentof the tasks arising from the reconstruction of the economy andthe industrialization of the country, on the other. It pointedout that during the NEP period, the Party had recruited,not only hundreds of thousands of proletarians, but also pettybourgeois who, by their personal and social example, “bringdisorganization into the ranks of the Party, [who] despise theopinions of the workers and the working peasants, . . . [and] arecareerist elements . . . whom the Party has got rid of only to aninadequate extent through the systematic, day-to-day work ofthe control commissions. . . .” 127 Hence the need for a morethoroughgoing purge.


The formulations used in the resolution showed that in 1929the composition of the Party was even worse than it had beenin 1922, when the situation was already far from satisfactory.128

They also showed the need, if the road to new social changeswas to be followed successfully, for a series of measures to betaken which would place the Party under supervision by themasses and remove from it the elements alien to communism.

The resolution made the point that, although the factory andworkshop cells were the soundest section of the Party, this didnot imply that those cells did not equally need purging, for,there too, “elements have infiltrated which are incapable ofplaying the role of a Communist vanguard,” owing to theirthirst for personal enrichment, their failure to participate ac-tively in improving labor discipline, or the fact that they hadnot broken with religion, or that their antisemitism showedthat they had a counter-revolutionary attitude, etc.129 The res-olution declared that, without purging the entire Party itwould not be possible “fully to draw into the Party’s ranks thebest elements from the considerable body of non-Party pro-letarian activists,” and thereby put the Party in a position tofulfill the “great and complex tasks of the new phase.” 130

The resolution was even more severe on the situation pre-vailing in the rural cells. It stressed the need to show specialcare in checking the composition of these cells, so as to re-move from them elements alien to the ideology and politics ofthe proletariat. It provided a long list of the characteristics ofpersons who ought to be expelled from the Party.

Finally, the resolution mentioned the need to purge thecells operating in the “non-productive” sectors, pointing outthat the specific role played by these called for particularattention to be given them.131

(2) The ways in which the policy of purgingwas applied, and its limitations

On the plane of principle, the resolution emphasized theneed to bring the masses into the application of the policy ofpurging the Party. Thus, dealing with purges to be carried outin the village cells, with the help of “activists” from among the


agricultural workers and the poor and middle peasants, itdeclared that such purges must be effected before the eyes ofthe broad masses of the peasantry: “only a purge like that cantransform the rural cells.”132

On the plane of concrete measures, however, the resolutionput the problem mainly in terms of organization, and not of amass movement. It dealt essentially with the part to be playedby the CCC and the local control commissions, and merelymentioned participation by the non-Party masses in purgingoperations. The masses were not called upon to develop theirinitiative so as to remove from the Party the elements thatwere not genuinely proletarian and Communist, or to insistthat those Party members who had made mistakes be placed inconditions which would enable them to turn over a new leaf.The results of the purges would thus depend mainly on theway that the control commissions functioned, their notion oftheir task and of the requirements for a thorough cleanup inthe Party, and the information they could collect (in the ab-sence of a broad mass movement) on the practices and rela-ions engaged in by the Party members whose cases theyexamined. Given that the members of the control commissionswere actually chosen from among the Party cadres, they wereunable, in most cases, to act otherwise than in accordance withwhat those whom they were called upon to “judge’’ consid-ered proper. Since there was no mass movement, they weretherefore led to “punish,” in the main, only the most glaringcases of careerism, corruption, contempt for the masses, andbureaucratic and bourgeois behavior, while “ordinary” caseswere usually passed over, although it was also upon the treat-ment of these—especially when they were numerous—thatthe masses’ trust, or lack of it, in the Party and its membersdepended, and so the Party’s own capacity for revolutionaryaction.

The way in which the question of purging the Party waspresented included other aspects, too, for the commissionswere required to take into consideration the members’ opin-ions 133 and ensure that “hidden” supporters of varioustrends—such as the “Democratic Centralism” group, Myas-nikov’s supporters, and other “anti-Party groups,” including


the Trotskyists—were “ruthlessly expelled.” What was struckat here was not any activity, but mere opinions, includingsupposed opinions, since the resolution spoke of “hiddenopinions,” which were to be the target of a “ruthless” strug-gle.134 This made it possible to expel anyone who expressedreservations regarding some of the Party leadership’s ap-preciations of the economic or political state of the country, orwho drew different practical conclusions from these apprecia-tions. In the absence of adequate control from below, and ofgenuine desire for unity, and without clear awareness that itwas inevitable for ideological contradictions to arise in theParty, and that these must be dealt with otherwise than bycoercion, the terms of the resolution favored resorting to “ad-ministrative methods” in the sphere of the ideological strug-gle. And that entailed grave consequences for the Party itself,for Marxism can develop only in open struggle and discussion:besides which, if the Party is to have concrete knowledge ofthe economic, social, and political situation as it really is, thenevery Party member must be allowed to express his views.

It was precisely because the resolution on the purge, andthe directives sent to the local control commissions by theCCC, emphasized expulsions as the means of uniting theParty ideologically,135 that Yaroslavsky’s speech at the Six-teenth Conference was interrupted by delegates who wereunhappy about the content of the resolution, and about the factthat they were not allowed to discuss it. These interruptionswere all the more significant because, in his speech, Yaros-lavsky avoided dealing with the directly political aspects ofthe purge. It was also remarkable that the delegates who hadinterrupted and criticized Yaroslavsky’s speech neverthelesseventually adopted the resolution, which was passed unanim-ously.136

(3) Remarks on some immediate effects ofthe purges

From the quantitative standpoint the purge of 1929–1930was relatively less important than that of 1921–1922. Whereasin the earlier period the purge eliminated a quarter of the


Party’s membership, in 1929–1930 it affected only about 11percent—and some of these were subsequently readmitted.137

The effects of the purge upon relations between the Partyand the masses were also very limited. The purge was mainlycarried out by internal Party commissions, without active par-ticipation by the worker and peasant masses, as the resolutionof the Sixteenth Conference had demanded. Actually, thatresolution had hardly been adopted when the bulk of theParty’s forces found themselves committed to the struggle forindustrialization and large-scale collectivization. As a result,the purge carried out in 1929–1930 did not lead to the decisivechanges in the functioning and composition of the Party thatthe Sixteenth Conference had considered necessary: thechanges did not enable the Party to become the indispensableinstrument for a real socialist transformation of social rela-tions, with authentic knowledge of the situation and aspira-tions of the broad masses of the peasantry. This knowledgewas, instead, darkened thereafter by the fear which membersof the Party’s basic units might feel regarding the conse-quences of reporting difficulties which were due to mistakendirectives from the higher authorities, since such initiativescould easily be identified with manifestation of “ideologicaldissent” and punished by expulsion. More generally, the useof such measures as weapons of “ideological struggle” re-duced the Party’s capacity to enrich itself from the experienceand thought of the majority of its members: the latter wereoften led, through concern not to “make trouble for them-selves,” to express agreement with every directive, howevertrivial, and not to reveal any opinion that might differ from thatheld by the leadership. The development of this attitude had aprofoundly negative effect on the functioning of democraticcentralism, on Party life, and on the Party’s relations with themasses.

In the immediate period, however, the measures taken in1929–1930 helped to make the Party a more “efficient” in-strument for carrying out decisions than it had previouslybeen, and this was what the leadership had wanted, so as to beable to cope with increasingly heavy tasks of economic con-struction.


(d) The plans for industrial development

The Sixteenth Conference was a decisive moment—butonly one such moment—in the conflict between the advocatesof “maximum” industrial growth and those who advocated“optimum” growth. This moment, in contrast to what hadhappened at the Fifteenth Congress, saw the victory of theformer over the latter. A new, explicit political line of im-mediate and accelerated industrialization was thus defined,which was to produce a series of effects on class relations, andespecially on the worker-peasant alliance. The more this linehardened and developed, the more clearly its class conse-quences were to emerge; and that was not yet the situation atthe time when the Sixteenth Conference was held.

In order to evaluate correctly the implications of the deci-sion taken regarding industrial policy, we must see how thecontrasting lines on this matter were reflected—before, dur-ing, and after the Sixteenth Conference—in the “plan figures”for industrialization and investment. We must also see howthe line that prevailed meant bringing nearer the final breakwith the NEP: this was a contradiction within the resolutionsof the Sixteenth Conference, which actually resolved that theNEP should not be abandoned in the near future.138

(1) The evolution of the plans for industryand investment before the SixteenthParty Conference

We have seen how, after the Fifteenth Congress, two lineson industrialization were in conflict.139 One line continued todefend the orientation of the Congress, declaring that, whileindustry was the “driving force” of the economy, agriculturewas its “basis,” and upholding the need for allocating invest-ments in such a way as to enable every branch of the economyto develop at a rate that would enable it to meet the needs ofthe other branches and those of the consumers (hence theidea of an “optimum” development). The other line assertedthat what was required was “maximum’’ development of in-


dustry, with priority given to investment in heavy industry.We have seen that this second line, to which Stalin adheredmore and more closely, until he became its defender, tendedto win the battle—implicitly, at least, since, until the spring of1929, no formal resolution decided clearly between these twoorientations.

The increased influence of the advocates of “maximum”industrial growth was reflected in the gradual raising of thetargets of industrial production and investment proposed bythe various organs which participated in the framing of theplans. Thus, in December 1927 Gosplan forecast that, duringthe First Five-Year Plan (which was then intended to end in1931–1932), production by large-scale industry would be mul-tiplied by 1.77 (according to the “minimum” version of theplan) or by 2.03 (according to the so-called optimum ver-sion).140 In August 1928 the VSNKh proposed a draft whichforecast that at the end of the five-year period (now ending in1932–1933), production by large-scale industry would be 2.27times as great. In December 1928 the so-called optimum vari-ant prepared by Gosplan and the VSNKh forecast a coefficientof 2.68. In April 1929 the “optimum” variant adopted by theSixteenth Conference forecast a coefficient of 2.79. Thus, be-tween December 1927 and April 1929, the “forecastcoefficient of five-year growth” in large-scale industry in-creased by 37 or 60 percent, depending on the variant.141

Parallel with this increase, the amount forecast for grossinvestment in plant rose from 16 milliard roubles (March1927) to 64.6 milliard (April 1929).142 Thus, within two years,the forecast for investment had increased fourfold. More than40 percent of this investment was earmarked for industry, and,within that total, heavy industry’s share rose from 69.4 percentto 78 percent.143

This “growth” in the targets for investment and industrialproduction was all the more significant because it did notresult from a more rigorous analysis of the Soviet economy’spotentialities and the prospects opened up by the changing ofproperty relations and production relations. Examination ofthe successive drafts of the Five-Year Plan shows that the


“growth” in the industrial targets reflected, fundamentally, achange in the political line—that is, increased influence by theadvocates of rapid industrialization. To convince oneself ofthis it is enough to look at the resolution on the Five-Year Planadopted by the Sixteenth Conference and by the Congress ofSoviets, together with the decisions and forecasts relating tothe industrial targets.

(2) The decisions of the Sixteenth PartyConference and of the Congress ofSoviets

The resolution on the Five-Year Plan adopted by the Six-teenth Conference was ratified in May 1929 by the Congressesof Soviets of the RSFSR and the Ukraine and by the FifthAll-Union Congress of Soviets.144 This resolution adopted theso-called optimum variant of the draft prepared by Gosplan. Itdeclared (thereby rejecting the conclusions of the FifteenthParty Congress) that the plan must ensure “maximum de-velopment of production of means of production as the basisfor the industrialization of the country.”145 The principle ac-cording to which agriculture was the basis of the economy wasthus no longer stated.

In the resolution adopted by the Sixteenth Conference,realization of the forecasts for increases in industry and in-vestment presupposed that agricultural production would in-crease to more than 50 percent over the prewar figure.146 Yetagricultural production had not increased since 1926, and waseven tending to decline, as a result of the application of the“emergency measures.’’ Nothing, therefore, justified such op-timism (which facts were, moreover, to refute absolutely)where the progress of agricultural production was concerned.The forecasts for agriculture were also unrealistic in assumingthat, throughout the five-year period, there would be onlygood harvests.147

By adopting the hypothesis of maximum and uninterruptedgrowth, the resolution on the Five-Year Plan took no accountof a number of points made by Lenin regarding the need, if


one was to draw up an economic plan properly, to follow themethod of guiding links, so as to proceed from the determin-ing of one task to another. Lenin also spoke of the need todefine the minimum (not “optimum”) conditions that wouldhave to be fulfilled if the various tasks were to be accom-plished, and to prepare several variants to be applied in thelight of the conditions that actually prevailed—which meantnot persisting in the attempt to fulfill certain tasks if the condi-tions for their fulfillment failed to materialize. Lenin alsostressed that, in the actual situation of Soviet Russia, the pointof departure, or base factor, for the compiling of the plan mustbe the actual availability of foodstuffs, which, in practice,meant grain. None of these points made by Lenin was takeninto account in 1928–1929, either in the drawing up of theoptimum version or in connection with what happened lateron, when harvests turned out to be much poorer than hadbeen forecast in the Plan.148

The resolution on the Five-Year Plan also forecast that theproductivity of labor in industry would increase by 150 per-cent. This forecast was actually nothing but a wish. It wasbased on no objective facts, and contradicted the actual evolu-tion of productivity—and it was not realized. However, on thebasis of these “forecasts” regarding agriculture and the pro-ductivity of labor, the Plan provided for real wages to rise by71 percent, while costs of production would fall by 35 percentin industry and 50 percent in building.149 These forecasts ofreductions in costs were based on the hypothesis (whichnothing justified, and which was not fulfilled) of a very greatimprovement in the use made of raw materials and power.

There were many reasons why forecasts were adoptedwhich were so unrealistic.150 and which were known to besuch by a large number of Party members and cadres, thoughthey dared not say this publicly. Among these reasons werethe development of unemployment during the precedingyears, and the steadily growing difficulties in the sphere offood supplies, which impelled the Party to seek a way ofescaping from a situation which had become dangerous forthe Soviet power. The worsening of relations with the peas-


antry as a result of the application of the emergency measuresmeant that, for many Party members and cadres, this way outof the crisis had to take the form of industrialization at thefastest possible rate, while they looked upon as “defeatists”those (very few) who took upon themselves the risk involvedin pointing out what was unrealistic and contradictory in anumber of the forecasts. The worsening of the worker-peasantalliance which began early in 1928 thus played a considerablerole in the rallying of support for the forecasts of the Five-YearPlan as it was then laid down. This support reflected theillusion that a technological and economic solution could befound for the political problem presented by the deteriorationof the alliance. It gave expression to a “technicist-economist”component in the Bolshevik ideological formation (somethingto which I shall return)—a component which acquired specialimportance under the impact of a series of factors: the en-thusiasm for industrialization with which a section of theworking class, especially the youth, was fired; pressure by theheads of the big enterprises and industrial trusts; the influenceof a nationalism which was flattered by the idea of “catchingup with and surpassing” the industrialized countries within ashort period; and so on.

A set of objective and subjective conditions thus favored theelaboration and acceptance of an industrial plan which wasextremely ambitious,151 to the extent that it contained not onlyunrealistic forecasts but also many internal contradictions.

Even a moderately close study of the forecasts of the Five-Year Plan, and of the way the economy actually functioned,reveals, indeed, that in a certain number of sectors the mate-rial resources needed for reaching the set of targets laid downwere not available, and would not become available withinthe five-year period. Thus, in 1928–1929, the quantity of ironand steel products needed for satisfying the needs arising fromthe Plan’s targets was 30 percent larger than the productionactually available, which meant that 30 percent of the demandengendered by the Plan could not be met. A similar “deficit,”on the order of 25 percent, was observed where nonferrousmetals were concerned, and the same was true in relation tomany other products.152


The incompatibilities between the various targets of thePlan, and the unrealism of some of its forecasts, were notunknown to the economists and technicians who prepared it.However, in the atmosphere of “ruthless struggle” against theRight which reigned at the beginning of 1929, most of thempreferred to keep quiet, or to voice their doubts only crypti-cally, for such warnings might easily be described as ex-pressions of “defeatism” and signs of one’s adherence to the“Right tendency.”

Strumilin, though himself an advocate of ambitious targets,noted that most of the specialists working on the Plan were nolonger prepared to point out its weaknesses, or the adjust-ments that needed to be made in it. He wrote on this subject:“Unfortunately, it would not be reasonable to put to the testthe civil courage of these specialists, who are already saying,in the corridors, that they prefer to stand for higher temposrather than sit [i.e., in prison] for lower ones.”153

It was not only fear of repressive measures that led suchmen to keep their mouths shut about the unrealistic characterof certain aspects of the Plan (which called in question the“realism” of the Plan as a whole), but also the ideological andpolitical atmosphere which developed during 1928, in con-nection with the rupture, already far advanced, of theworker-peasant alliance. Even those Party leaders who fa-vored rapid industrialization, but who were aware of the un-realism of certain forecasts, ceased to voice their doubts inpublic.

A letter sent by Kuibyshev to his wife at the end of 1928 (andnot published until nearly forty years later) testifies to thesituation in which some leaders were placed, even thoughthey were far from being suspected of “Rightism”: “Here is whatworried me yesterday and today: I am unable to tie up thebalance, and as I cannot go for contracting the capitaloutlays—contracting the tempo—there will be no other waybut to take upon myself an almost unmanageable task in therealm of lowering costs.” 154

In this situation, the plan was drawn up without even anydefinition of the concrete conditions that would have to becombined if the forecast increases in production and produc-


tivity were to be realized. Essentially, the plan counted on theeffects to be brought about by technological changes whichhad not yet been studied, and on the introduction of “up-to-date techniques” which were to be imported, without allow-ing for the time needed for these techniques to be mastered onthe scale of society as a whole.

It must be noted that the plan, which was conceived as aplan for building socialism, offered no prospect of change inthe social organization of labor and production. The relationswhich had become consolidated in the state sector during theNEP period seemed untouchable. Nowhere was there anyquestion of realizing the prospect outlined by Marx, whowrote that socialism would change labor relations and bringabout “a new organisation of production, or rather the delivery(setting free) of the social forms of production in present or-ganised labour (engendered by present industry) of the tram-mels of slavery, of their present class character. . . .” 155

In the absence of development of new forms of the organiza-tion of labor, an increase so rapid as was forecast for theproductivity of labor in industry was expected to result mainlyfrom the exercise of increased authority over the workers bythe managers of enterprises. The resolution on the Five-YearPlan gave precise attention to this point. It called for “deter-mined struggle against unjustified absenteeism and slacknessin production” and for strengthening labor discipline.156

(3) Labor discipline, material incentives,and the role of the trade unions

At the beginning of 1929, a broad campaign was launchedfor the strengthening of discipline. On January 17 a CC resolu-tion drew a harsh picture of the situation in the Donbas mines,denouncing “a decline in labor-discipline among the minersand the technical personnel responsible for supervising thelower echelons.” It also denounced “inadequate improve-ment in the productivity of labour.” 157 On February 21 the CCcalled for stricter labor discipline.158 On March 6 the Sovna-rkom adopted a decree imposing severer punishments for ab-


senteeism and unpunctuality. The managers of enterpriseswere called upon to enforce the strictest penalties, and thelabor exchanges to give priority to workers who had not beendismissed for indiscipline.159 In the same month, the head ofthe department of “labour economy” in the VSNKh, I. Kraval,complained of the inadequacy of penalties for offences againstdiscipline, and the indulgence shown in such cases by thearbitration commissions, the inspectorate of labor and thecourts.160 Thus at the very moment when the First Five-YearPlan was relying on labor discipline to bring about a rapidincrease in productivity, the existing conditions failed to jus-tify this expectation. The Party therefore increasingly calledupon the trade unions to help in strengthening discipline.After adopting the resolution on the Five-Year Plan, the Six-teenth Conference addressed an “appeal to all the workersand working peasants of the Soviet Union,” 161 which stressedthe gigantic scale of the tasks that had to be accomplished inorder to ensure a rapid development of industry. This docu-ment emphasized the role that should be played by emulationin the phase that was opening, and the “indissoluble linkwhich binds together emulation and the Five-Year Plan.” Itcalled for the adoption by the trade unions and by the eco-nomic organs of “a system of incentives for those who engagein emulation.” 162

We have seen163 that a large number of trade-union leaders, in-cluding Tomsky, resisted, to some extent, directives which,in their eyes (with the knowledge they possessed of the work-ers’ day-to-day problems) implied the exercise of too strong apressure upon the workers. They considered that, carried be-yond a certain point, this pressure might produce negativeeffects. Hence their reservations regarding the scale of thetasks projected in the domain of productivity of labor andreducing production costs.

Already in December 1928, at the Eighth Congress of thetrade unions, open clashes took place between Tomsky andthose who supported his views, on the one hand, and, on theother, the advocates of a “maximum” tempo of industrializa-tion.


Pravda of December 12 uttered a warning to trade unionswhich gave insufficient attention “to the new tasks of thereconstruction period.” At the Congress itself, Kezelev, one ofthe leaders of the metalworkers’ unions, denounced thischarge as “a calumny against the trade-union movement,”including in his rebuttal also some articles of the same sortwhich had appeared in Komsomolskaya Pravda. In these arti-cles he saw “an attitude of disdain” toward the interests of theworking masses and a revival of “Trotskyism” (alluding to thecontroversy of 1920–1921 about the “statisation” of the tradeunions).164 He declared that taking the road of industrializationrequired that “increased attention be given to the everydaypersonal interests and needs of the worker masses.” 165

A large proportion of the trade-union cadres who supportedthis view were relieved of their posts by a decision of theParty. In 1929–1930, in Moscow, Leningrad, the Ukraine, andthe Ural region, between 78 and 86 percent of the members offactory trade-union committees were replaced.166 These veryhigh percentages show that the overhauling of the factorycommittees was due to disagreement on the part of the major-ity of the trade-union officials with demands which they con-sidered could only produce a loss of confidence in the tradeunions among the working class.

After this overhaul, the trade-union apparatus was betterequipped to act so as to bring about an increase in the produc-tivity of labor, particularly by helping to revise wages andwork norms.

A situation thus developed which was marked by a harden-ing of labor discipline and by the introduction of output normsimposed from above—a situation unfavorable to an increase ininitiative on the part of the masses and to their participation inthe fight against “bureaucracy” for which the Sixteenth Con-ference had appealed.

(e) Agrarian policy

While the Sixteenth Conference inaugurated a new politicalline in the industrial sphere, it reaffirmed existing principles,


those of the NEP, so far as relations with the peasantry wereconcerned.

True, the resolution on agriculture 167 dwelt upon the de-velopment of collective and state farms, but it stated that thismust be brought about very gradually, in view of the amountof ideological and political work that the Party would first haveto undertake in the rural areas. The middle peasant thus con-tinued to be presented as “the central figure” 168 in agriculture,and was due to remain so for a long time yet. Here are someindications of how cautiously the problem of collectivizationwas still dealt with at that time.

(1) The Sixteenth Conference and theproblems of agriculture

According to one of the resolutions adopted by the SixteenthConference, the maximum possible development of the“socialised sector” (state and collective farms) would enablethe sown areas of this sector to be increased to 26 millionhectares in 1933, or 17.5 percent of the entire area to be sownin that year. It was forecast that in 1933 this sector wouldprovide 15.5 percent of the gross production of grain, and 43percent of the marketed production, or over 8.4 million metrictons.169

Individual farming was thus still to play the predominantrole in agriculture, providing nearly 90 percent of total grossproduction.170

Furthermore, the resolution on agriculture said that “in thenext few years the principal increase in agricultural produc-tion will come from the individual farms of the poor andmiddle peasants,” for “small farming is still far from havingexhausted its potentialities, and will not exhaust them sosoon. . .”171

The complete transformation of the agrarian structures wasthus situated in a perspective of at least a decade, and keptwithin the framework of the NEP.172

The resolution on agriculture adopted by the Sixteenth Con-ference dwelt at length on “the systematic aid that the Soviet


power must render to the poor and middle peasants in order toincrease the productivity of their labour.”173 Consequently,the state farms and the machine-and-tractor stations werebeing called upon to help individual peasants. The contractsystem (kontraktatsiya) was also regarded as a means for in-creasing the productivity of the farms of the poor and middlepeasants, while constituting a form of linkage between ag-riculture and industry—which was to give priority to supply-ing means of production to peasants who had entered intocontracts for delivery of their produce.174

Thus, the Sixteenth Conference stressed, above all, consoli-dation of the worker-peasant alliance, within the setting of theNEP, this consolidation implying massive aid to individualfarms by supplying them with means of production: this wasone of the “new forms of the bond.” It was to be combinedwith an increase in direct aid to the peasants by workers goinginto the countryside to help with the work in the fields, and todevelop ideological and political activity there so as to con-tribute to the struggle of the poor and middle peasants againstthe kulaks.175

The political line drawn by the Sixteenth Conference wasmeant to be, for several years, appropriate to the requirementsfor strengthening Soviet power in the rural areas. It was there-fore a “cautious” line, which should avoid improvisations andprecipitancy.

(2) The reasons for the “caution” shown inthe agrarian policy decided on by theSixteenth Conference

The “cautious” character of the agrarian policy decided onby the Sixteenth Conference makes a striking contrast with itsambitious industrial policy. This “caution’’ reflected the Par-ty’s knowledge of the very great weakness of its rural organizaions and its inadequate implantation among the peasantry. Italso took account of the weakness of the village soviets, whoseauthority, still almost entirely formal in 1929, would have tobe strengthened if it was desired that the Soviet power should


exercise real influence on rural life and stimulate a broadmovement for collectivization.176

V. The contradiction between industrialand agricultural policy, and the “greatchange”

The caution which characterized the agrarian policy re-solved upon by the Sixteenth Conference soon came intocontradiction with the industrial policy it had adopted. Carry-ing out the latter required that the countryside supply thetowns and industry, and also the export trade, with quantitiesof agricultural produce very much larger than the peasantswere prepared to hand over under the conditions of whatremained of the NEP. The industrial policy decided on at thebeginning of 1929 actually entailed fresh violations of theprinciples of the NEP, for the increasing resources absorbedby industrialization reduced further and further the possibilityof supplying the villages with manufactured goods. Con-sequently, at a time when the procurement organs were striv-ing to get more produce out of the rural areas, the towns werebecoming less and less capable of supplying these areas withproducts of industry.

In 1929 the peasants found that the system of emergencymeasures was growing more burdensome, and that it nowfunctioned continuously. The discontent resulting from thisled to reductions in the sown area, increased difficulty ingetting supplies for the towns, and cuts in food rations. Therewere even disturbances in some regions.177

Thus, the contradiction between the Party’s industrial andagricultural policies soon made itself felt. This meant thateither one policy or the other, or both together, would have tobe revised, so that they could be coordinated.

The predominance of the will to industrialize (which wasconnected with the worsening of the internal contradictions ofthe urban sector) and the conviction that any “retreat” in face


of peasant discontent would jeopardize industrialization, asthat process was conceived, led to the industrial policy beingmaintained, and measures adopted which were more andmore overtly in breach of the NEP, even if the latter was noyet “officially” abandoned.

(a) The attempt to speed upindustrialization and the turn towardrapid collectivization

The growing deterioration of the worker-peasant alliancegave, paradoxically, an incentive to accelerating industrializa-tion still further. The Party leadership thought that in this waythey could reduce the time during which the shortage of in-dustrial products would be felt. In the immediate period,however this shortage was aggravated still further.

Similarly, the deterioration of the alliance impelled theParty leadership to turn toward rapid collectivization of farm-ing178 (the ideological and political conditions for which werestill not present), because state and collective farms increas-ingly appeared to offer the only solution to the difficulties inagriculture and the problems of feeding the towns. Since col-lectivization and mechanization were seen as being linked,accelerated collectivization led to raising the targets for pro-duction of tractors and agricultural machinery, which meantthat more steel was needed, and caused the tempos laid downfor increases in industrial production to be speeded up stillfurther, becoming ever more unrealistic.

Thus, the plan approved by the Sixteenth Conference fore-cast an increase of 22 percent in industrial production in oneyear. A few months later, without anything having happenedto justify such a revision, the annual plan for 1929–1930 raisedthis forecast to the fantastic height of 32 percent. Eventually,the official statistics recorded an actual increase of 20percent—and that was an optimistic estimate, since it did notfully reckon with the effects of increased prices on the “value”of industrial production.179

The replacement of the targets agreed to at the SixteenthConference by others which were more and more “radical”


meant a new break with the still apparently “NEP” lineadopted by that conference.

(b) The break with the line of the SixteenthConference and its effects on politicalrelations within the Bolshevik Party

In the history of the Bolshevik Party, the break with the lineof the Sixteenth Conference hastened the development of anew style of leadership, a new type of relations between theSecretariat and the Party’s highest bodies—the PB, the CC,the conferences and the congresses of the Party. Thus, be-tween April and December 1929, numerous decisions of his-toric significance—since they led to the complete abandon-ment of the NEP—were taken without the highest Partybodies being consulted. When these bodies met, all theycould do was to ratify decisions which were already beingcarried out and which had been announced publicly: to ques-tion them would have meant opening a crisis of leadershipthat would be highly dangerous in the situation that the coun-try was in. Consequently, during those months of 1929, the CCdid no more than seek (ineffectually) to restrict somewhat thedegree of the “turn” away from the decisions of the SixteenthConference.

The “Right opposition” suffered its final defeat in thisperiod. In May and June 1929 Bukharin published the lastarticle in which he tried, cautiously, to show disagreementwith certain aspects of the economic line which was becomingdominant.180 Thereafter he was to be deprived of the opportu-nity to give the slightest public expression to his doubts. OnAugust 21 and 24 Pravda launched an open attack on Bukha-rin. It was the start of a “general offensive” conducted bythe entire press and directed against all who were associatedin any way, real or supposed, with the positions of the “Right.”Nearly all such persons were dismissed from their posts.These measures even affected Lenin’s widow and his sister,N. Krupskaya and Maria Ulyanova.181 In contrast to what hadhappened in the case of previous oppositions, no chance toreply was allowed to the Right opposition, even for the pur-


pose of refuting baseless charges. Still less was there anyquestion of letting them express their disagreement with deci-sions taken which ran counter to the resolutions of the Six-teenth Conference.182 Under these conditions, the Partycadres’ opportunities for studying the situation as a wholebecame extremely restricted.

Worse still, fear of being penalized for “Right deviation”caused most of the cadres to present a falsely optimistic pic-ture of the situation. In this way, under the impact of thecontradictions between the industrial and agricultural lines,and of a set of illusions regarding the real situation, the policyof the “great change” began—the starting point of a process ofcollectivization carried out under conditions such that its con-sequences for the worker-peasant alliance and for agriculturalproduction were profoundly different from what the Partyleadership expected.

VI. The “great change” at the end of 1929

The principal aspect of the “great change” was the aban-donment of the line of the Sixteenth Conference which hadadvised a step-by-step approach to collectivization, so that thismight be based on firm foundations, in particular by makingthe transition to collective forms of production depend on thewillingness of the peasant masses. It was concern for this thathad guided the fixing of the targets to be reached in theagrarian sphere by the end of the First Five-Year Plan. A fewpoints will serve to illustrate the speed and sweep with whichthe line of the Sixteenth Conference on agriculture was aban-doned.

(a) Accelerated collectivization andabandonment of the SixteenthConference line

As regards the speeding-up of collectivization, two periodsneed to be distinguished clearly: one covering the months


June to October 1929, the other beginning in November 1929and ending in early March 1930.

The first of these periods was one which saw the develop-ment of a collectivisation that was basically voluntary and inaccordance with the aspirations of the poor and middle peas-ants who were then taking the road of collective farming.During this first period, 900,000 peasant households joinedthe collective farms, which meant an increase in the percent-age of collectivized households from 3.9 to 7.6,183 a considera-ble leap forward. However, there were some circumstanceswhich limited the implications and significance of what hap-pened at that time.

(1) During this period it was poor peasants who made upthe main body of recruits to the collectivized households: theyaccounted for 78 percent of the members of the “communes,”67 percent of the members of the “artels,” and 60 percent ofthe members of the “tozes,” 184 whereas they made up only 35percent of the rural population (according to the same statisti-cal sources).185 It could not be said, therefore, that the middlepeasant had taken the road to the collective farm, even though,toward October, the proportion of middle peasants did in-crease a little.186

(2) The development of the movement was extremely un-even, and this was still the case at the end of 1929.187

(3) Collectivization was only voluntary on the whole. Al-ready in September 1929 the collective-farm leadership is-sued directives regarding the formation of collective farms inwhich they said that what must be aimed at was the collec-tivizing of “entire localities” (this was what was called “com-plete,” sploshnaya, collectivization), the collectivizing ofpractically all the means of production, and the forming oflarge-scale kolkhozes.188 But the collectivizing of an “entirelocality” rarely corresponded to the will of the peasants con-cerned: it was exceptional at that period for all the peasants ofa locality to be ready at the same time to join the kolkhoz.Likewise, it was rare for them to be ready to renounce indi-vidual ownership of almost all their means of production andto form large-scale kolkhozes.

Already in the summer of 1929 administrative pressure was


being brought to bear on the peasants to get them to enter thekolkhozes. This pressure took, first of all, the form of “eco-nomic threats.” The local authorities said to the peasants,including the poor peasants: “If you don’t join the kolkhoz youwill be given neither seed nor machinery. 189 In some re-gions, however, the pressures soon became more direct.Those who declined to join the kolkhoz were subjected tofines, given a spell in prison, and threatened with deportationto another part of the country.190

The period that began in November 1929 was marked by aconsiderable increase in the pressure exerted on the peasants,so that the nature of the collectivization movement changed.The article by Stalin entitled “A Year of Great Change” 191

opened this period. In it he announced for the coming year(1930) targets that were a great deal more ambitious than thosewhich had been laid down for 1932–1933. He said that in 1930he state and collective farms would provide over 50 percentof the marketed production of grain—1.8 and 4.9 million met-ric tons respectively.192 The sown areas of these farms taken asa whole were to cover 18.3 million hectares, as against 6million in 1929. Thus, the tempos which had been forecastonly a few months earlier were now to be exceeded, and theline of the Sixteenth Conference abandoned.

But the revision of tempos did not stop there. Less than amonth after Stalin’s article appeared, the Sovnarkom decidedthat 30 million hectares must be collectivized in 1930, and thatthe sovkhozes must cover an area of 3.7 million hectares193:about a quarter of all peasant households were to be collec-tivized during 1930.

The close link between the forecasts for collectivization andthe targets for procurement shows that the deciding factor infixing the pace of collectivization was not the transforming inepth of the situation of the peasant masses, but the will toestablish as quickly as possible structures that would facilitatesecuring from the countryside the quantities of grain neededfor the realization of the industrial targets.

This speeding-up of collectivization was based upon anexaggeratedly optimistic view of the situation in the rural


areas—a view that underlay a series of mistakes which were tohave the gravest consequences for the subsequent functioningof the kolkhozes and for the worker-peasant alliance.

(b) The optimistic view of the situation atthe end of 1929

Already in his article of November 1929 Stalin felt able tosay that “the middle peasant is joining the collective farm,”adding that this was “the basis of that radical change in thedevelopment of agriculture that constitutes the most importantachievement of the Soviet government during the lastyear.”194 He went on to say that “the new and decisive featureof the present collective-farm movement is that the peasantsare joining the collective farms not in separate groups, as wasformerly the case, but by whole villages, volosts, districts andeven okrugs.” 195

These formulations considerably overestimated the prog-ress achieved by the collectivization movement. Actually, atthe time when Stalin’s article appeared, collectivization em-braced only a minority of peasant households, mainly those ofpoor peasants, and “complete” collectivization was excep-tional.196

The weeks that followed showed (as we shall see shortly)that accelerated collectivization, in the forms which it as-sumed, came up against strong resistance from the peasantmasses. This was to be admitted in March 1930.

However, in the speech he gave on December 27, 1929, to aconference of Marxists specializing in agrarian problems, Sta-lin emphasized once more the “ease” with which, accordingto him, the collective farm movement was developing. One ofthe reasons he mentioned as explaining this feature of themovement was the fact that “in our country the land isnationalised, and this facilitates the transition of the indi-vidual peasant to collectivist lines.” 197 Stalin reaffirmed thatthe conditions existed for “complete” collectivization to becarried out successfully in many regions, adding that this waswhy it was possible to go over “from the policy of restricting


the exploiting tendencies of the kulak to the policy ofeliminating the kulaks as a class.” 198

A study of what actually happened in the rural areas duringthe winter of 1929–1930 shows that the entry of the peasantsinto the collective farms took place under conditions that werefar from being as favorable as might be supposed from thestatements just quoted.

(c) The concrete conditions of the “turn”toward collectivization in the autumn of1929

The “turn” toward collectivization in the autumn of 1929took place under very contradictory conditions. On the onehand, there was the continuing and broadening movement ofmany poor peasants, and of a certain proportion of the middlepeasants (especially those who had only recently emergedfrom poverty), into collective farming: this movement wasfacilitated by the help which, since the Sixteenth Conference,the Party and the state apparatus gave to newly formed kol-khozes. On the other hand, though, this turn was due (and toan increasing extent) to the intensification of administrativepressure exerted upon the peasants.

The fixing of “collectivisation targets” which were continu-ally being raised, and which were determined without anypreliminary investigation, contributed to the multiplication ofthese administrative pressures. The local authorities engagedin a kind of “emulation” in scoring high percentages of collec-tivization. They were moved to act in this way by fear of thepenalties that could rain down upon the cadres in placeswhich “lagged behind,” 199 and by the false notion they hadthat a “general advance” of the movement 200 was in fact goingon, so that they were apprehensive of being left behind. Fur-thermore, increasing intervention by elements from outsidethe villages, usually very enthusiastic but also very ignorant ofthe local situation, contributed to the employment of measureswhich had nothing in common with an effort to persuade thepeasants—something that would have required more time


than was available to the delegates or teams sent from thetowns to speed up collectivization. The “delegates for collec-tivisation” were often assigned tasks to be fulfilled within avery short period, with penalties for nonfulfillment, and thisprevented them from engaging in time-consuming masswork.201

The forms of pressure brought to bear on the peasants (inorder to “encourage” entry into the kolkhoz by those whowere not ready to join it voluntarily) were very diverse. Theycould be measures of an administrative, economic, or penalcharacter—the last being usually connected with the opera-tions of “dekulakization” to be described later.

The two “non-penal sanctions” most commonly usedagainst peasants who were unwilling to join the kolkhoz were:a ban on the trading organs selling them any goods what-soever, and depriving them of their land (which was taken bythe kolkhoz). In other cases, peasants who failed to join thekolkhoz found themselves compelled to exchange the landthey cultivated for other land, of poor quality, situated far fromthe village. Sometimes their seed corn, their cattle, and all orsome of their instruments of labor were confiscated. Theywere allowed a few days in which to make up their minds.202

To these sanctions others could be added, such as fixing ahigh level of taxation on an individual peasant, forbidding thechildren of peasants who were not collective farmers to attendschool,203 and so on. Such measures were “illegal” and weresubsequently condemned by the Party leadership. However,between November 1929 and March 1930 they were widelyemployed by the local authorities.

At the same time, the policy of “dekulakization” was used toget as many peasants as possible into the kolkhozes. In princi-ple, this policy should have meant taking severe measuresonly against a minority of kulaks. Thus, shortly before the endof 1929, a subcommission of the CC proposed that the kulaksbe divided into three categories. The first was to consist of theactive opponents of Soviet power, guilty of hostile acts. Thosebelonging to this category were to be sentenced to prison orexile. At the time, the number of heads of families belonging


to this category was estimated at about 52,000. The secondcategory of kulaks would consist of nonactive opponents ofSoviet power. The village assemblies were to decide theirfate. In principle, the subcommission considered that thesekulaks should be banished from the village, but not sent toSiberia: their number was estimated at 112,000. Finally, thethird category was to be made up of those thought to be“capable of re-education”: its members could be allowed tojoin the kolkhoz, but without the right to vote for five years,after which they would become full-fledged members. In theRSFSR alone this category was estimated to include about650,000 households. The subcommission considered that itwas important to make use of the labor power of the kulaks’families, numbering in all some five million persons (thisbeing presumably the figure for the USSR as a whole).204

However, the PB rejected this proposal. In their view, it didnot answer to the requirements of the policy of “eliminatingthe kulaks as a class.” At the November plenum Molotov hadsaid that it was necessary to “adopt towards the kulak theattitude that has to be adopted towards our worst enemy notyet liquidated.”205

At the end of 1929 and the beginning of 1930 dekulakizationwas carried out without any precise political orientation. Inprinciple, it was supposed to be a task for the poor peasants,but, in practice, this group was not organized, and so de-kulakization was carried out in most cases by elements fromoutside the village—workers’ “brigades,” or the GPU—who,with (or sometimes without) the help of some poor peasants(real or alleged), themselves drew up the list of “kulaks” anddivided them into three categories. Those who fell into thefirst category were arrested by the GPU. Those in the secondcategory were exiled. Those in the third category were al-lowed to remain where they were, with a minimum of pos-sessions, and were assigned poor-quality land outside the vil-lage: if they failed to supply the procurement quota fixed for them,their possessions could be confiscated and themselvesexiled. The information available indicated that only a minor-ity were assigned to the third category.206


In relation to collectivization as it was carried out at the endof 1929 and the beginning of 1930, dekulakization became ameans of forcing the poor and middle peasants to join thekolkhozes, since, if they failed to do so, they could easily belabeled “kulaks.” Under these conditions, many peasantsjoined the kolkhoz not from conviction but from fear of being“dekulakized” by the local authorities. The numbers sent intoexile in 1930 were considerable. Entire trains, called by thepeasants “death-trains,” carried the exiles off toward thenorth, the steppes, and the forests. Many of them died on theway, from cold, hunger, or disease. Anna Louise Strong wrote:“Several times during the spring and summer I saw theseechelons moving along the railroad: a doleful sight, men,women and children uprooted.” 207

Sometimes only the women and children were exiled, sincethe head of the family had been arrested; at other times, entirefamilies were exiled; and at yet other times, the children wereleft behind, to become beggars and tramps (besprizornyie).208

Such activities (which were denounced in March 1930)played a considerable role in the collectivization campaign ofthe winter of 1929–1930, and seriously affected the quality ofthe kolkhozes formed under such coercion. Thus, writing ofcollectivization in the Ural region, the agrarian journal NaAgrarnom Fronte said: “The local organisations in the ruralareas found in dekulakisation a powerful means for drawingpeasants into the kolkhozes and for changing some kolkhozesinto communes. The recourse to intimidation, associated withother procedures, was often accompanied by threats of de-kulakisation against those who did not let themselves be‘drawn in.’” 209

In these circumstances, the expression “kulak” no longermeant merely a rich peasant: it now meant any peasant whodid not want to join the kolkhoz.

Generally speaking, it referred to a certain attitude to col-lectivization. In 1930 a publication of the CommunistAcademy wrote: “By ‘kulak’ we mean the carrier of certainpolitical tendencies which are most frequently discernible inthe podkulachnik, male or female.” 210


The documents and publications of the time show that therewere many cases in which poor or middle peasants weredekulakized in this way. Dekulakization might also result inthe possessions of those dekulakized being appropriated, orbought at absurdly low prices, by the persons who carried outthe operation: a house was bought for a rouble, a cow for 15kopecks.211 The absence of previous implantation of the Partyin the countryside, and the intervention of “dekulakizationagents” coming from outside and acting in haste, thus resultedin the expropriation, arrest, or exiling even of agriculturallaborers and of persons known to be poor peasants.212

As the journal Na Agrarnom Fronte put it: “The peasant isbeginning to associate with this idea [the idea of mass collec-tivization] the possibility that he too may find himself one dayamong the dekulakised, falling thus into the camp of theenemies of Soviet power.” 213

(d) Accelerated collectivization halted inMarch 1930

A situation of insecurity and tension thus developed in therural areas which was most detrimental to the worker-peasantalliance. In March 1930 an article by Stalin called a halt to themethods which had characterized the “great change” andspeeded up the tempo of collectivization. The article ap-peared in Pravda on March 2, 1930, under the title: “Dizzywith Success.” 214 A few days later (March 15th) came a deci-sion by the CC entitled: “On the Fight Against Distortions ofthe Party Line in the Collective-Farm Movement.” 215

An essential feature of Stalin’s article “Dizzy with Success”was the warnings which it contained, directed against certain“dangerous and harmful sentiments,” of which, however “itcannot be said that [they] are at all widespread in the ranks ofOur Party.” 216

One of the tendencies which Stalin denounced in this waywas that which violated the principle that peasants should jointhe kolkhoz without coercion. Another was shown in allowinginsufficiently for the diversity of conditions in the differentregions of the USSR.


Stalin deplored the fact that, instead of the preparatory workneeded to get the peasants to join the kolkhozes of their ownfree will, there had been “bureaucratic decreeing of thecollective-farm movement.” He mentioned that in certain re-gions, and specifically in Turkestan, the local authorities hadcoerced the peasants who did not want to join the kolkhoz “bythreatening to use armed force, by threatening that peasantswho are not yet ready to join the collective farms will bedeprived of irrigation-water and manufactured goods.”217 Sta-lin said of these methods that they were worthy of SergeantPrishibeyev. He emphasized that such practices were a viola-tion of the Party line and could only have the effect of “dis-crediting the idea of the collective-farm movement.”218

Another tendency denounced in Stalin’s article of March 2was that which failed to respect the artel form as the predomi-nant form of collective farm. He mentions attempts to “leapstraight away into the agricultural commune,” which, he says,can only result in “irritating the collective-farm peasant” andmaking it harder to deal with “the grain problem,” which “isstill unsolved.”219

The article then tries to analyze the reasons why thesetendencies have appeared. The explanation offered is that the“easiness” of the successes achieved had “gone to the heads”of a certain number of Party members and cadres: they had“become dizzy with success,” so that they thought that com-plete collectivization could be achieved very quickly, even bybeing forced upon reluctant peasants.

The article included an appeal: “We must put an end tothese sentiments. That is now one of the immediate tasks ofthe Party.”220

The appearance of this article caused much disarray amongthe local Party cadres, who were wholly committed to the fightfor collectivization and had not previously received any seri-ous warnings against the methods to which they were havingrecourse. At first, some cadres thought that the article must bea forgery, and attempts were made, at the level of the Party’sbasic units, to prevent its republication in the regional pressand stop its diffusion among the masses: some newspaperscontaining the article were even confiscated from peasants.221


The CC’s decision published on March 15, 1930, reaffirmedthat the practices denounced by Stalin were indeed to be re-garded as “deviations from the Party line,” and detrimental tothe future development of the collective-farm movement.

One month after his article “Dizzy with Success,” Stalinreturned to the subject of the conditions under which collec-tivization had proceeded in the winter of 1929–1930. He didthis in the form of a “reply” to the numerous letters provokedby his earlier article.222

In this “reply” Stalin said that the root of the mistakes madelay in “a wrong approach to the middle peasant. Resort tocoercion in economic relations with the middle peasant.Forgetfulness of the fact that the economic bond with themasses of the middle peasants must be built not on the basisof coercive measures, but on the basis of agreement with themiddle peasant, of alliance with him.” 223 He mentioned three“chief errors,” namely: violation of the principle that peasants’entry into the collective farms should be voluntary; forgettingthe fact that the rate of progress of collectivization could not bethe same in every region; and violation of the Leninist princi-ple of “not running ahead of the development of the masses, ofnot decreeing the movement of the masses, of not becomingdivorced from the masses.” 224

The explanation given remained the same as that presenteda month previously. It was only a matter of “some of ourcomrades, intoxicated by the first successes of the collective-farm movement,” who “forgot” the instructions of Lenin andof the CC and fell victim to the “dizziness” of “vanity andconceit.” 225

And so, a serious violation of the Party line, affecting theentire country, was “explained” by referring to a mere psy-chological metaphor—“dizziness from success” which hadproved too much for “some of our comrades.” Given the scaleof what had happened, and the gravity of its consequences,such an “explanation” is obviously inadequate. Mistakesmade on such a scale and persisted in for several months couldonly result from a political line and a style of leadership thatengendered certain practices.


This political line was the one based on the proclaimedexistence of a “great change” which, in reality, had not oc-curred. Because of this false estimate of the situation, the localcadres of the Party were given collectivization targets whichdid not correspond to the state of mind of the peasant masses.The pressure brought to bear on the cadres had caused thelocal authorities to develop practices which had nothing to dowith any “dizziness from success” but were bourgeoispractices—meaning recourse to threats and coercion againstthe masses, which was the method used very widely to drivethe peasants into the collective farms against their will.

Moreover, it must not be lost sight of that the Party leader-ship allowed matters to go on like this for several months.This means, since the leadership cannot have been wholly outof touch with reality, that it let these practices continue, be-cause, from its point of view, attainment of the “targets” ofcollectivization seemed at that time more important than re-spect for the will of the peasant masses. The CC called ahalt226 at a moment when these “targets” had been attainedand even exceeded, and when continuing to apply such crudecoercion risked bringing about extremely dangerous conse-quences both politically and economically (in particular, com-promising the prospects for the spring sowing).

In any case, the stop put to certain methods of dekulakiza-tion and collectivization did not prevent some of those whohad been labeled “kulaks” from continuing to be sent intoexile (for months on end whole trains were devoted to thistask, even hindering the transport of goods 227), nor did it pre-vent similar methods from reappearing after a few weeks hadpassed.

(e) The immediate effects of the “greatchange” and of the halt called inMarch–April 1930

The magnitude of the operation carried out during thewinter of 1929–1930 dealt a decisive blow to the kulaks. Theypractically ceased to exist as a class. In a few months, the main


base of private capitalism in the Soviet Union was smashed,and this meant the beginning of a radical change in the socialrelations which had prevailed until then in the Soviet coun-tryside.

Nevertheless, the blow struck at the kulaks had been struck,in the main, by forces from outside the village, and usingpractices which hit hard at broad strata of the peasantry. Theresult was that serious damage was done to the worker-peasantalliance. Stalin admitted this when he said that, if the mistakesmade were “persisted in,” and “not eliminated rapidly andcompletely” (which they were not), they would “lead usstraight to the discrediting of the collective-farm movement, todissension in our relations with the middle peasants, to thedisorganization of the poor peasants.” 228

The “discrediting” of the collective-farm movement soonrevealed itself in quantitative terms. By February 20, 1930, 50percent of the peasant farms had been collectivized, which wasconsidered at the time to be a real and serious success, for “wehad overfulfilled the five-year plan of collectivisation by morethan 100 percent.”229 The percentage of collectivization evenadvanced to 59 percent by March 1, 1930.230 In his article“Dizzy with Success,” Stalin declared that the task of the hourwas “to consolidate the successes achieved and to utilize themsystematically for our further advancement.”231

Instead of a consolidation and a continuation of the advancemade, however, what happened was something quite differ-ent. The relaxation of constraint was accompanied by a rapidreduction in the percentage of households collectivized, areduction which continued until October 1930, by which timethis percentage had fallen to 21.7 percent.232 The dimensionsof the retreat show how brittle was the “collectivization” ac-complished in the winter of 1929–1930. It was all the more sobecause some of the kolkhozes which had been formed inhaste and which survived the “halt” of March 1930 functionedvery poorly, as is apparent from a number of documents andindices.233

A few words must be said here about the qualitative aspectof the collectivization of the winter of 1929–1930. This aspect


was dominated by a certain number of features which were farfrom being eliminated later on. On the one hand, some of thecollective farmers, who had entered the kolkhozes againsttheir will, worked grudgingly: some peasants who had beensupporters of Soviet power until then were even turned intomore or less hostile elements. This was one aspect of the verygrave damage done to the worker-peasant alliance. On theother hand, quite a few peasants who were not hostile toSoviet power had joined the kolkhozes without being con-vinced of the superiority of collective farming. They retainedtheir outlook as individual petty producers, and did not bringto the kolkhoz the spirit of collective initiative which wasneeded if it was to work properly. This circumstance foundreflection in the considerable amount of stealing of collectiveproperty that went on, and also in the fact that many kolkhozeswere managed in such a way that some of their marketableproduction was sold otherwise than through the lawful chan-nels.234 The Soviet government was soon convinced of thenecessity to put the kolkhozes under the control of elementsalien to the peasantry, so as to impose work norms andstandards of management by means of disciplinary measures.New hierarchical relations were established in the coun-tryside, which prevented the collective farmers from runningtheir own affairs.

Furthermore, the peasants who had been made to join thecollective farms against their will had often slaughtered someof their cattle,235 so that the collective farms lacked draft ani-mals and, in general, had very little livestock.

Thus, a series of objective and subjective conditions com-promised the success of collectivization from the start. Thisexplains why it was that, for many years, collective farmingproduced material results that were much inferior to the farm-ing of the NEP period, and why, in order to appease peasantdiscontent and help to bring about a certain recovery in pro-duction, the Soviet government decided in 1930 to permit thecollective-farm peasants to cultivate individual holdingswhich were quite sizable, and to possess livestock of theirown. Later, it was even necessary to reestablish a “legal” free


market and to allow collective farms and collective farmers todispose of part of their production therein. These measures,by their scope and because of the conditions in which theyhad to be taken, produced in their turn a negative effect on theproper functioning of the kolkhozes, for the private activitiesof the collective farmers seriously encroached upon their workin the collective-farm fields.236 Thus, by setting in motion animmense social transformation without the active participa-tion of the broad masses of the peasantry, and frequently evenagainst their will, serious prejudice was done not only to theworker-peasant alliance but also to collective farming itselfand to the role that it might have played in the development ofagricultural production. The subsequent political conse-quences of all this, which had a marked effect on class rela-tions as a whole, were such as to raise the question whetheraccelerated collectivization, in the form that it took at the endof 1929, was really necessary.

(f) The question of the need for acceleratedcollectivization and of the forms this took atthe end of 1929

What we know about the conditions in which the acceler-ated process of collectivization that was set going in the lastmonths of 1929 actually developed permits us to conclude thatit corresponded to a political necessity, and not to an “eco-nomic necessity.” In 1929 it was materially possible to bringabout a rapid increase in industrial and agricultural produc-tion without undertaking unprepared “mass collectivization.”This increase could have been effected in such a way that thepoor and middle peasants strengthened their positions andbecame organized so as to take the offensive themselvesagainst the kulaks and go over to collective production. Whatwas missing that was wanted if matters were to take thiscourse was the ideological and political conditions for work-ing out and applying such a line, together with the timeneeded for these political conditions to be prepared. But ifthere was no time, that was not because of “economic difficul-


ties” which had to be coped with in a hurry. There “was notime” because the way in which the class struggle had de-veloped since 1927 had created a situation that was increas-ingly dangerous for Soviet power. The dangers which hadaccumulated were largely due to the contradictions in thepolitical line followed after 1927, the line of speeding up acertain type of industrialization which increasingly deprivedthe rural areas of manufactured goods and led to indiscrimi-nate application of the emergency measures.

In the situation which gave rise to these measures, theBolshevik Party leadership presented the problem of the rapiddevelopment of collective farms and state farms first andforemost in economic terms. As they saw it, this developmentoffered the only means of quickly increasing the production ofgrain (the Soviet Union was expected to become “in aboutthree years’ time . . . one of the world’s largest grain producers,if not the largest”) and this was to enable the state to achieve“decisive successes” in grain procurement and the accumula-tion of emergency reserves.237 Transformation of social rela-tions and struggle against the kulaks thus appeared as condi-tions to be realized in order to reach the economic targetsaimed at. At the outset, the turn toward collectivization waspresented as an integral part of an economic policy aimed atestablishing new forms of production, and class struggle was,as it were, subordinated to the purposes of the Party’s eco-nomic policy. Very soon, however, the actual process took aquite different course,238 as a result of the development of thecontradictions. The latter had become extremely acutethrough not being correctly dealt with in good time, and en-gendered a series of pragmatic measures which did not consti-tute a coherent political line (hence the succession of hasty“turns” and “halts,” made without preparation because theywere not foreseen). It was the interlinking of these contradic-tions (between classes in the village, between the Party’sindustrial and agricultural policies, between the interests oftown and country, etc.) and the interventions to which theygave rise (interventions not inspired by an overall analysis)which caused a process of uncontrolled collectivization to


begin. And this, despite the victory won over the privatebourgeoisie, led to a split in the worker-peasant alliance and aprofound weakening of Soviet agriculture.

The absence of control over the collectivization processresulted in a succession of more or less improvised measures,intended to deal with a series of unforeseen “crises” for whichthe Party had been unable to prepare itself. If, despite the lackof a coherent political line, the process of collectivizationseems to have developed with a certain “logicality,” that wasbecause of the “objective logic” of the succession of crises andbecause the measures taken to deal with them were them-selves dictated by a relatively stable ideological conception.

Underlying the collectivization process were the develop-ing and shifting contradictions between classes. The form ittook was largely the result of political and ideological deter-minations. It was due, among other things, to the BolshevikParty’s extremely weak implantation in the countryside andthe inadequacy of the help given to the poor and middlepeasants—especially the almost complete lack of support forthe efforts that some of these peasants had made to follow thepath of collectivization. It was due to a conception of indus-trialization that was oriented increasingly toward modernlarge-scale industry, requiring large investments and importsof equipment. It was due to a style of leadership which did notallow the true lessons to be drawn from the experience ac-cumulated by the workers and peasants during the first fiveyears of the NEP. It was due, finally, to a style of discussionwithin the Party which was aimed above all at striking downanyone who expressed views different from those of the major-ity in the PB or of the Secretariat. When the right and theopportunity to express their views had been taken from suchdissenters,239 and they tried to make their voices heard never-theless, penal measures were taken against them, and theywere treated as enemies.240 Yet it was necessary, if the ques-tions raised were to be clarified, that democratic centralismshould really operate, that genuine discussion should de-velop, that the refutation of errors should be based on concreteanalyses, and not, as increasingly came to be the practice


during the last years of the NEP, on the use of a selection ofquotations from Lenin, usually torn from the context in whichthe ideas they contained had been formulated.

The style of discussion which became established in the lastyears of the NEP did not help to show up the mistakes madeby the various oppositions, so that as soon as these groups hadbeen eliminated, usually by organizational methods, the sub-stance of some of their theses easily reemerged, in some moreor less modified form—the best example of this being thetheory of exacting “tribute” from the peasantry, which was,basically, only another version of the theory of “primitivesocialist accumulation.”241

This same style of discussion led, as a rule, to rejection enbloc of everything said by the opposition: thus, after the Six-teenth Conference, when the “Right” opposition stressed theneed to undertake a form of industrialization compatible withthe principle that agriculture was the basis of economic de-velopment (a thesis which the majority of the Party had ac-cepted up to that time), this position was denounced as “pro-peasant,” “pro-kulak,” and hostile to industrialization.

On the plane of ideology, the form taken by the collectiviza-tion process—which, in practice, did not put “in command”the task of strengthening the alliance with the poor and mid-dle peasants—was determined by the growing predominancein the Bolshevik Party’s ideology of an “economist-technicist”element. This led to the belief that the difficulties that aroseduring the last years of the NEP would be solved through thedevelopment of modern industry and the transformation of the“technological bases” of production, especially in agriculture.The increasing role ascribed to “technological progress” ex-tended even to ideological and political problems. Con-sequently, recognition of the necessity for ideological andpolitical struggle against the petty-bourgeois and individualistideas existing among the peasantry tended to be replaced bythe thesis according to which it would be by the introductionof machinery into agriculture that the “peasant mentality”would be changed.242

This conception could not but favor an accelerated process


of collectivization, carried through even without the peasantshaving first been convinced of the correctness of thecollective-farm road. Indeed, it led to a belief that through theuse of machinery the peasants’ ideas would change, this use ofmachinery being the “essential” means for changing the“peasant mentality.”

From this example it can be seen that changes in thesuperstructure were subordinated to technological changes.In order to understand how such subordination can have ap-peared “acceptable,” we need to take an overall view of theBolshevik ideological formation, and of the way in which thiswas itself transformed.

Notes

1. Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p. 3.2. Ibid., p. 7.3. Ibid., p. 52 (Stalin’s report to the Moscow Party organization,

April 13, 1928).4. N. Bukharin, Uroki khlebozagotovok, Shakhtinskogo dela, i

zadachi partii, pp. 32–33. (Article first published in Pravda,April 19, 1928).

5. K.P:S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 372 ff., especially p. 377.6. Frumkin’s letter is known to us only in part, from the quotations

from it included by Stalin in a reply dated June 20 (Works, vol.11, p. 121 ff.), and from a speech by Thälmann reported inPravda, August 11, 1929 (M. Lewin, Russian Peasants, p. 336, n.17).

7. Lewin, Russian Peasants, p. 300.8. These divergences were “publicly” acknowledged by Stalin in

a speech in February 1929, to a restricted audience—a jointmeeting of the PB and the Presidium of the CCC. The text ofthis speech was published for the first time in volume 11 ofStalin’s Works, the Russian original of which appeared in 1949.(See Works, vol. 11, p. 335).

9. There had, in fact, been a stormy discussion between Rykov andStalin in February 1928, when the general secretary returnedfrom his tour of Siberia and Rykov spoke against the way the


emergency measures were being applied. In the Trotsky Ar-chives there is a letter (T.1106) mentioning this discussion. Atthe seventeenth Party Congress Rykov himself said that the“Right Opposition” had begun at the time of the application ofthe emergency measures decided upon in the winter of 1927–1928. See XVII-y Syezd VKP(b) (1934), p. 210, quoted in Carrand Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 61, n. 5.

10. At the time of the July plenum, Bukharin called on Kamenev,the former leader of the united opposition, who had been expel-led from the Party by the Fifteenth Congress but was then in thecourse of applying for readmission. It is mainly from Kamenevthat we know of Bukharin’s reactions to the discussions in thePB and the plenum in the summer of 1928. The account ofBukharin’s conversation with Kamenev is document T.1897 inthe Trotsky Archives (quoted in Carr and Davies, Foundations,vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 82, n. 1).

11. Actually, the “bond based on metals” was one of the require-ments of the NEP as it had been formulated by Lenin. Thisrequirement, which implied, first and foremost, supplying tothe poor and middle peasants adequate quantities of instru-ments of labor, even if only simple ones, had been very littlehonored between 1923 and 1928, as was shown by the under-equipment of the farms worked by these peasants. In 1928 Stalingave a different interpretation of the “bond based on metals”:for him, it had to mean the large-scale supply of tractors andmachines to agriculture. His speech, entitled “Industrializationand the Grain Problem,” is in Works, vol. 11, p. 164 ff. (seeespecially p. 172).

12. Ibid., p. 167.13. Ibid. The full text of this speech was not published until twenty

years later, doubtless because this declaration signified a breakwith the resolutions adopted previously on the need to continuea policy of “closing the scissors.”

14. What Bukharin said is known to us only indirectly, in particularfrom document T.1901 in the Trotsky Archives. See also RobertV. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution: CommunistOpposition in Soviet Russia, pp. 331-333; Carr and Davies,Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 79; and Lewin, Russian Peasants,pp. 303–304.

15. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 65.16. Ibid., pp. 76–77.


17. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 372–379.18. Ibid., p. 392. In November 1926, as we saw, Stalin had said

something similar: see his report to the Fifteenth Party Confer-ence, in Works, vol. 8, p. 301.

19. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 393.20. Ibid., pp. 394, 395. It is to be observed that the position that the

NEP was not being abandoned was kept up not only through1928 but for long after, even when nothing was left that corre-sponded to the principles of the New Economic Policy. Thus,Pravda of March 21, 1931, was still saying: “N.E.P. has not yetended.” The persistence of this claim was due not only to thefact that throughout the 1920s the NEP had become the symbolof the worker-peasant alliance, but also to the fact that theeconomic, political, and ideological conditions Lenin had statedwere necessary before it would be possible to proceed to a stagehigher than the NEP had not been attained, so that it wasdifficult to proclaim officially the going over to a different pol-icy.

21. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 81.22. See document T.1897 in the Trotsky Archives, quoted by Co-

hen, Bukharin, pp. 291–292.23. On this see volume I of the present work, pp. 423–424.24. See the article by E. Goldenberg, a supporter of Bukharin’s

views, on “The German Problem,” in Bolshevik, March 15,1928, p. 35.

25. This characterization of Social Democracy had been given forthe first time by Zinoviev in the early 1920s, but was then droppedby him (see Theodore Draper, “The Ghost of Social-Fascism,”in Commentary, February 1960, pp. 29–42). Stalin took up theidea in 1924, notably in an article published in Bolshevik, no. 11(1924), with the title: “Concerning the International Situation.”In this he wrote: “Fascism is not only a military-technical cate-gory. Fascism is the bourgeoisie’s fighting organization thatrelies on the active support of Social-Democracy. Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of Fascism. . . .These organizations . . . are not antipodes, they are twins”(Works, vol. 6, p. 294). Nevertheless, this conception did notdominate Comintern policy in 1924, and until the Sixth Con-gress the Communist Parties practiced the “united front” invarious forms.

26. At the plenum of April 1929 Stalin was to assert that “the ele-ments of a new revolutionary upsurge are accumulating in the


capitalist countries” (Works, vol. 12, p. 17—an assertion refutedby events.

27. The “third period” followed that of “relative stabilization,”between 1923 and 1927, itself having been preceded by therevolutionary period of 1917–1923 (see F. Claudin, The Com-munist Movement: From Comintern to Cominform, especiallypp. 156–157).

28. In his report to the CC plenum of April 1929 Stalin said that hisfirst disagreements with Bukharin on international questionsarose at the time of the Sixth Comintern Congress. According toStalin, Bukharin there put forward theses which, contrary to therules normally observed, had not been previously submitted tothe Soviet Party delegation, so that the latter was obliged tomove twenty amendments, which “created a rather awkwardsituation for Bukharin” (Works, vol. 12, p. 21).

29. Bukharin’s speeches are in VI Kongressy Kominterna, vol. III,pp. 30–31, 137–138, 143–145; and vol. V, p. 130; quoted inCohen, Bukharin, p. 293. English translations will be found inInternational Press Correspondence, vol. 8, nos. 41, 49, 56, 59(July 30, August 13 and 27, September 4, 1928).

30. See above, note 28.31. At the plenum of April 1929 Stalin spoke about his dis-

agreements with Bukharin which had been reflected in theamendments voted by the Sixth Congress. He mentioned fourfundamental points of divergence:

(a) The international situation. The Soviet Party delegationhad moved an amendment declaring that aggravation of theworld economic crisis opened up “the prospect of maturingconditions for a new revolutionary upsurge.”(b) The fight against Social Democracy. The Soviet Party

delegation criticized Bukharin’s theses for saying no more thanthat this fight was one of the basic tasks of the sections of theComintern, for it considered that this statement did not go farenough. Its amendments declared that, if the fight against SocialDemocracy was to be carried through successfully, “stress mustbe laid on the fight against the so-called ‘Left-wing’ of SocialDemocracy, that ‘Left’ wing which, by playing with ‘Left’phrases and thus adroitly deceiving the workers, is retardingtheir mass defection from Social-Democracy.”

(c) Bukharin’s theses spoke of the need to fight against theRight deviation, but said nothing about the need to fight againstconciliation with the Right deviation.


(d) Party discipline. Another fault found in Bukharin’s theseswas that “no mention was made of the necessity of maintainingiron discipline in the Communist Parties” (Stalin, Works, vol.12, pp. 23–24).

32. These few points indicate what the lines of cleavage werethat separated Bukharin’s views from those of the majority of theJuly 1928 plenum, where international problems were con-cerned. I do not propose to analyze here the reasons for andsignificance of these divisions, and still less to discuss the at-titudes taken up by the various delegations at the Sixth Comin-tern Congress. However, it is to be noted that the resolutionsadopted by the Sixth Congress committed the Comintern to aparticular form of struggle by the working class, since theseresolutions failed to show clearly the need for class alliances.Noteworthy also is the clash at the Congress between the sharp-ly opposed views expressed by Ercoli (Togliatti) and by Thael-mann. For the former,

Fascism, as a mass movement, is a movement of the pettyand middle bourgeoisie dominated by the big bourgeoisieand the agrarians; moreover, it has no basis in a traditionalorganization of the working class. On the other hand,Social-Democracy is a movement with a labour and petty-bourgeois basis; it derives its force mainly from an organi-sation which is recognized by enormous sections of theworkers as the traditional organisation of their class.

For Thaelmann, however, “the ‘Left-wing’ Social-Democraticleaders are the most dangerous enemies of Communism in thelabour movement.” It was Thaelmann’s formulation that wasincorporated in the resolution passed by the Sixth Congress onthe international situation, (International Press Corre-spondence, vol. 8, no. 50 [August 16, 1928], p. 879; no. 53[August 23, 1928], p. 941; no. 83 [November 23, 1928], p. 1571).

33. Pravda, October 23, 1928, and Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p. 231 ff.34. Stalin, Works, vol. 11, pp. 234–235.35. Ibid., pp. 237, 240.36. Ibid., pp. 242, 244–245.37. A French translation of this article is included in Bukharin et al.,

La Question paysanne, pp. 213–240.38. A resolution of the Political Bureau dated October 8, 1928,

reprimanded Bukharin for having published this article without


previous “authorization.” The resolution was passed by themajority against the votes of Rykov, Tomsky, and Bukharinhimself (F. M. Vaganov, Pravy Uklon v VKP(b), pp. 161–163,174–175).

39. Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta, September 14, 1928; Pravda,September 25, 1928; Robert V. Daniels, A Documentary His-tory of Communism, p. 311; Cohen, Bukharin, p. 295, Carr andDavies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 315–317.

40. Bukharin et al, La Question paysanne, pp. 218, 220.41. Ibid., p. 220.42. Ibid., p. 222.43. Ibid., p. 231.44. Ibid., p. 235.45. Ibid., pp. 235–236.46. Ibid., pp. 239–240.47. Besides the sources in the Trotsky Archives, already men-

tioned, references to these requests by Bukharin are to be foundin the Sotsialistichesky Vestnik (the organ of the Menshevikémigrés), no. 9 (1929), which reproduced the gist of one ofBukharin’s conversations with Kamenev, and in a number ofspeeches at the Sixteenth Party Congress, especially the speechof Ordzhonikidze (see XVI-y Syezd VKP[b] [1930], p. 256,quoted in Lewin, Russian Peasants, pp. 315–316).

48. This is the title under which the speech appears in Stalin’sWorks, vol. 11, pp. 255 ff. Delivered on November 19, it waspublished in Pravda on November 24, 1928. Stalin made refer-ence in the speech to Bukharin’s article “Notes of anEconomist,” but without criticizing it, and so without settingout any arguments intended to refute it. A few months later,when the breach with Bukharin had been consummated, thissame article was to be presented (though still without any ar-guments being offered) as evidence of “eclectic confusion in-admissible for a Marxist” (see the resolution adopted on Feb-ruary 9, 1929, by the PB and confirmed by the plenum of April23, 1929, in K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 436 ff., espe-cially pp. 437–438).

49. “It may be asked where this is said in the theses, in whatpassage of the theses. (A voice: ‘Yes, where is it said?’) Evi-dence of this in the theses is the sum-total of capital investmentsin industry for 1928–1929” (Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p. 266).

50. Ibid., vol. 11, p. 255 (my emphasis—C. B.).


51. Ibid., p. 256.52. These resolutions, as we have seen, emphasized the opposite

idea of optimum accumulation and respect for a correct pro-portionality in investments, as between the different branchesof the economy.

53. See the textbook Political Economy, edited by Ostrovityanovand others, p. 533.

54. Lenin, CW, vol. 2, pp. 155–156. This observation has beendeveloped by E. Poulain in his thesis on Le Mode d’industriali-sation socialiste en Chine, p. 146. He mentions that the Soviettextbook quoted in the preceding note presents as a victory thefact that between 1925 and 1958 the production of means ofproduction in the USSR was multiplied by 103, whereas that ofconsumer goods was multiplied only by 15.6, and he adds thiscomment by Mao Tse-tung: “The problem is to know whetheror not this proportion of 103 to 15.6 is advantageous or not to thedevelopment of industry” (Hu Chi-hsi, ed., Mao Tsé-toung et laconstruction du socialisme, p. 117).

55. Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p. 257.56. Ibid.57. Ibid., pp. 258–259.58. Ibid., pp. 262, 263.59. Ibid., pp. 255, 263–264 (my emphasis—C. B.).60. The respective places assigned by Stalin in his speech of

November 19, 1928, to technical changes and to ideologicalchanges is shown by the following formulation: “. . . the recon-struction of agriculture on a new technical basis, causing aevolution in the minds of the peasants and helping them to

“acts” is technique, with the peasant acted upon.61. One of Stalin’s first pronouncements on the role that the state

and collective farms could play in increasing the marketableshare of production was his speech of May 28, 1928, to thestudents of the Sverdlov University (Works, vol. 11, pp. 85 ff.).In this speech Stalin declared that “the basis of our grain dif-ficulties lies in the fact that the increase in the production ofmarketable grain is not keeping pace with the increase in thedemand for grain. . . . The strength of large-scale farming,irrespective of whether it is landlord, kulak or collective farm-ing, lies in the fact that large farms are able to employ machines,scientific methods, fertilisers, to increase the productivity of

shake off conservatism, routine” (ibid., p. 279). Here what


labour, and thus to produce the maximum quantity of marketa-

These remarks were followed by a table (compiled by Nem-chinov) comparing gross production and marketable productionof grain in the different types of farm, before and after theRevolution. This table shows that the largest proportion of mar-ketable production (47.2 percent) was that contributed by the

After July 1928, when Stalin emphasized the need for the“tribute” to be paid by agriculture to industry, the developmentof collective forms of farming appeared more and more as themost effective means for ensuring that this tribute would beregularly forthcoming. The establishment of this means wasitself subordinated to transformation of the technical basis ofagriculture, for, as Stalin saw it, the will and initiative of thepeasants were not the driving force of new forms of productionor of the development of really new productive forces.

62.63. The resolution on the “control figures” was adopted unani-

mously by the plenum. Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky did notwish to oppose it publicly. The former “Left” opposition (nowabsent from the Party’s leading organs) supported the line ofindustrialization based on maximum investment in heavy in-dustry. Kamenev, who was now given permission to rejoin theParty, published in Pravda on November 16, 1928, an articleattacking those who wanted to launch a “struggle to reduce thegiven rate of industrialization.”

64. Two points need to be noted here:(a) In practice, the sums actually assigned to industrial in

vestment exceeded those laid down in the resolution of theNovember 1928 plenum, but without the conditions specifiedby that plenum being honored, so that the “shortages” of indus-trial products in the branches denied priority were made stillmore severe (Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, pt. 1, p. 314,n. 1).(b) The principle of giving priority to heavy industry domi-

nated not only the compiling of the plans but also their execu-tion. This meant that, if the material means needed for realizingall the targets fixed by the plan proved not to be available insufficient quantity (as was indeed the case), then the meansactually to be had were assigned preferentially to the priority

ble grain” (ibid., pp. 86, 88).

collective and state farms (ibid., p. 89).

Ibid., pp. 272–279.


branches—the others receiving even less than had been pro-vided for in the plan, so that additional distortions ensued. (See,e.g., Kubyshev’s statement in Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta,December 4, 1928, quoted in Carr and Davies, Foundations,vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 882.)

65. Bukharin expounded these ideas in an article in Pravda onJanuary 20, 1929, and, especially, in a long speech he made onJanuary 21 on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Lenin’sdeath. This speech was published in the principal newspaperson January 24, and then as a pamphlet with the title: Lenin’sPolitical Testament.

66. Quoted in Vaganov, Pravy Uklon, p. 198.67. The greater part of the resolution passed by the PB on February

9, condemning the positions of Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky,dealt with their demand for a Party discussion of their pro-posals, their allegedly “factional” activity, Bukharin’s contactswith Kamenev, the relations maintained by the three with“supporters of an opportunist line in the Comintern,” and so on.The resolution did not examine the basic political positions ofthe three, but proceeded by way of assertions. Thus, it declaredthat, “in the recent period, the Bukharin group have passed,where basic questions of our policy are concerned, from oscilla-tion between the Party line and the line of the Right deviationto defence of the positions of the Right deviation” (K.P.S.S. vrezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 432). The three were in this waycharged with placing themselves “objectively on the line . . . ofa weakening of the positions of the proletariat in the struggleagainst capitalist economic forms” (ibid.). And yet, in January1929, the three were in fact merely defending the positions theyhad been defending for a year, positions which were those ofthe Fifteenth Party Congress.

68. Ibid., p. 435.69. And yet, during the struggle against the united opposition, Sta-

lin had accused the latter of wanting the Soviet state to exploitthe peasantry (see Stalin, Works, vol. 8, pp. 368–369).

70. Lewin, Russian Peasants, pp. 333 ff.71. Ibid., pp. 334–335.72. Quoted in Ibid., p. 321.73. See the article in Pravda, December 11, 1929, entitled:

“Against Opportunism in the Movement of Worker and PeasantCorrespondents,” and the collective work entitled: ZaMarksistsko-leninskoye ucheniye o pechati.


74. Bukharin, Politicheskoye zaveshchaniye Lenina, p. 27, quotedin Cohen, Bukharin, p. 304.

75. The document is reproduced in a speech of Stalin’s to the Aprilplenum of the CC (Works, vol. 12, pp. 7–8).

76. Ibid., p. 11177. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 429 ff.78. Ibid., pp. 436 ff., especially p. 445.79. This speech of Stalin’s is in his Works, vol. 12, pp. 1–113. Cohen

notes (Bukharin, pp. 453–454) that Stalin’s speech as it was infact delivered certainly called for condemnations more severethan those that were adopted and are mentioned in the versionof the speech published twenty years later.

80. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 431, 432, 435 (myemphasis—C. B.).

81. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 436. This resolution was not published at thetime, but only much later. It was not until June–July 1929 thatthe measures resolved upon against Bukharin and Tomsky tookeffect publicly (Lewin, Russian Peasants, p. 325).

82. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 440.83. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 943.84. Ibid., vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 101–105.85. This was the speech published as “The Right Deviation in the

CPSU(B),” in Works, vol. 12, pp. 1–113. In the version printedat the time, about thirty pages were “cut,” presumably becauseof some of the formulations they contained, and were not madepublic until 1949.

86. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, pp. 37 ff.87. Only the principal aspects of these theses are considered here.

Their implications will be discussed later, in volume III of thepresent work. It was in the following years, indeed, that theygave rise to fresh developments, and became linked with a formof political practice that concretized their meaning.

88. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, p. 38.89. Ibid., p. 39.90. Ibid.91. Ibid., p. 53.92. Whether it was correct or not to call this contribution a “tribute”

is a point of only secondary importance.93. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, p. 53.94. Ibid., pp. 60–61.95. See above, pp. 101 ff.96. Not only did Stalin consider that the period of “restoration” was


completed in agriculture (that is, that the former “technicalbasis” had been restored), but he alleged that the “old tech-nique” was “now useless, or nearly useless”—a meaninglessproposition (ibid., p. 61).

97. Ibid., p. 60.98. Ibid., p. 62.99. Ibid., p. 64 (my emphasis—C. B.).

100. Ibid., p. 92.101. Ibid., p. 91.102. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 494–495.103. This resolution was published for the first time in 1933. The

criticisms of Bukharin made by some of the delegates to theSixteenth Conference, together with Molotov’s report, are to befound in later editions of the proceedings of this conference: seeXVI-taya Konferentsiya VKP(b) (1962), in which Molotov’s re-ort appears on pp. 58 ff.

104. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. II, pp. 92–93.105. Ibid., pp. 94–95.106. Ibid., pp. 59, 67, 97. Preobrazhensky had already asked for

readmission a year before the Sixteenth Conference.107. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 470 ff.108. Ibid., p. 470.109. Ibid., pp. 471–472, 482–483.110. Ibid., p. 471; see also volume I of the present work, pp. 330–

331.111. Ibid., p. 473.112. Ibid., pp. 474–475, 477 ff.113. Ibid., p. 482.114. It mentioned the work of the sections of Rabkrin, the production

conferences, the temporary commissions for “workers’ control,”the training of worker-correspondents (whose comments andcriticisms were sent to the newspapers), discussion by generalassemblies of workers and office workers of the results of inves-tigations, and so on.

115. K.P.S.S v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 483 ff.116. Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p. 34.117. K.P.S.S v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 483 ff.118. Ibid., pp. 485 ff.119. See volume I of the present work, pp. 317 ff.120. Between 1922 and 1928 about 260,000 members left the Party.

In 1927 some 44,000 left, of whom 17,000 were expelled by


decision of the CCC (the total membership at that time beingabout 1.2 million): Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, pp.132–133, 474.

121. In 1923 the Party’s CCC and Rabkrin were merged. The CCCthus came to operate in the sphere of the state machine as wellas supervising the activity of Party members. The role of theCCC became especially important in 1926 and after because ofthe fight against the oppositions and the application of disciplin-ary measures. In theory the CCC was independent of the CC(both being directly elected by the Congress), and it sat sepa-rately. From 1925 on, however, the CCC more and more oftencame to sit jointly with the CC, in the form of a “plenum,” and ittended to become, in practice, a mere department of the CC(Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, pp. 116–117).

122. Ye. Yaroslavsky, Chistka Partii, pp. 29–33.123. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 485, and XVI-taya Kon-

ferentsiya VKP(b) (1962), pp. 589–611.124. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 483.125. The Party’s financial problems were not then discussed in pub-

lic. Only in exceptional cases were a few figures given relatingto some of the Party’s functionaries and their remuneration(Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, p. 121).

126. Nomination to important posts in the state machine was possi-ble only with the agreement of the Party (that is, of the servicesattached to the Party Secretariat) and, in some cases, of otherauthorities. The various posts appointment to which was super-vised in this way formed part of the nomenklatura. Nominationto these posts was not reserved for Party members, but thepercentage of Party members nominated to them was, as a rule,higher in proportion to the degree of responsibility of the postsconcerned. Thus, in 1927, over 75 percent of the chairmen andmembers of trusts under the VSNKh were Party members, and96.9 percent of the managers of major industrial enterprisescame directly under VSNKh. In general, it was persons whowere already Party members who were appointed to theseposts, but it sometimes happened that specialists appointed to

122–125).127. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 487.128. See volume I of the present work, especially pp. 308–209,

313–314, 321–322, 426–427, 447–448. Let us recall some of the

them were admitted to the Party at the same time (ibid., pp.


terms used by Lenin at the beginning of 1922: “Taken as awhole (if we take the level of the overwhelming majority ofParty members), our Party is less politically trained than isnecessary for real proletarian leadership in the present difficultsituation.” He expected at that time “a big increase in the effortsof petty-bourgeois elements, and of elements positively hostileto all that is proletarian, to penetrate into the Party” (Lenin, CW,vol. 33, pp. 256, 257.

129. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 488.130. Ibid.131. Ibid., pp. 489–490.132. Ibid.133. Ibid., pp. 490–491.134. It must be pointed out that the resolution on purging the Party

which was adopted by the Sixteenth Conference was, in thisrespect, profoundly different from that which was formulated inJune 1921 on Lenin’s initiative (see Lenin, CW, vol. 42, pp.315–316; Lenin’s proposal was approved by the PB on June 25,1921: ibid., p. 567.) At the time of the purge in 1921 a circularfrom the CC declared that it was not permissible to expel amember for ideological differences, and the case of members ofthe former “workers’ opposition” was quoted as an example.This circular appears to have been honored, on the whole (T. H.Rigby, Communist Party Membership, p. 99).

135. Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, pp. 144–145136. Ibid., pp. 145–146.137. Rigby, Communist Party Membership pp. 97, 178–179.138. This aspect of the decisions of the Sixteenth Conference is

analyzed later, under the heading: “The Sixteenth Conferenceand the problems of agriculture,” above, p. 455.

139. See above, pp. 370 ff., and 407 ff.140. It will be seen that, in reality, what was called the “optimum”

version of the plan was a “maximum” version: it presupposed asteady increase in harvests, in productivity of labor, and soon—in other words, “optimum” objective conditions, and thatwas why it was called the “optimum” version. The same confu-sion of terms was to apply where the subsequent alternativeversions of the Five-Year Plan were concerned. This confusionfacilitated the adoption of a “maximum” version described as an“optimum” version, giving the latter term a meaning quite dif-ferent from the one intended by the advocates of balanceddevelopment of the different branches of the economy.


141. The figures for the various drafts of the Five-Year Plan are givenin Zaleski, Planning, p. 54, with mention of the sources forthem.

142. Ibid., p. 57, and K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 449. It is tobe noted that the resolution of the Sixteenth Conference whichadopted the figure of 64.6 milliard roubles declared that the“optimum” variant of the plan was approved (K.P.S.S. v re-zolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 453), although this variant actually fore-cast the figure of 74.2 milliards for investment (Zaleski, Plan-ning, p. 246).

143. Zaleski, Planning, p. 57.144. The meeting of this Congress coincided with the publication of

the detailed Five-Year Plan: Pyatiletny Plan Narodnokho-zyaistvennogo stroitelstva SSSR (1929)—three volumes,with 1,700 pages in all. It included the list of enterprises to bebuilt or enlarged in order that the targets decided on might bereached.

145. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 453.146. Ibid., p. 449.147. This is only one example of the conditions that were presup-

posed for the fulfillment of the Plan. These conditions werelisted by G. F. Grinko in his article “Plan velikikh rabot,” inPlanovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 2 (1929), pp. 9–10: see M. Lewin,“Disappearance of Planning in the Plan,” Slavic Review, June1973, p. 272.

148. These points of Lenin’s were set forth in his letter toKrzhizhanovsky, the chairman of Gosplan: CW, vol. 32, pp. 371ff.

150. The facts exposed this unrealism, for, while it was possible tosay that the First Five-Year Plan was “fulfilled in four years,”this could be done only by taking certain figures as “indices offulfillment” and ignoring everything that was not fulfilled, inspheres that were vital for the standard of living of the masses(light industry, agriculture, real wages) and for accumulation(productivity of labor, costs of production , etc.).

151. As has been said, while the Plan, as a set of forecasts, was notfulfilled, a circumstance which entailed a series of conse-quences that were negative in their impact on the worker-peasant alliance and on the working and living conditions of theworking class—the “industrial ambition” that it embodied was,partly, satisfied, for under its impetus Soviet industry made


gigantic progress in a certain number of spheres. It is useless tospeculate whether a more coherent and more realistic plan,putting industry directly at the service of agriculture, wouldhave enabled the same material results to have been achievedwithout entailing the same negative consequences: history can-not be “done over again.”

152. See Table IX on p. 87 of Zaleski, Planning.153. Planovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 1 (1929), p. 109; partly quoted in

Lewin, “Disappearance,” Slavic Review, June 1973, p. 272.154. G. V. Kuibysheva et al., V. V. Kuibyshev: Biografiya, quoted in

Lewin, “Disappearance,” Slavic Review, June 1973, p. 273, n.6.

155. Marx, first outline of The Civil War in France, in Marx andEngels, On The Paris Commune, p. 157. (The English is Marx’sown.)

156. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 454.157. Direktivy K.P.S.S. i Sovyetskogo pravitelstva po khozyaistven-

nym voprosam, vol. II, p. 7.158. Ibid., pp. 12-17.159. Sobranie Zakonov, no. 19 (1929), art. 167.160. Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn, March 3, 1929161. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 495–499.162. Ibid., pp. 498–499.163. See above, pp. 235, 345.164. See volume I of the present work, pp. 384 ff.165. VIII-oy Syezd Professionalnykh Soyuzov, SSSR, pp. 3–14, 24,

55.166. S. P. Trapeznikov, Kommunisticheskaya partiya v periode nas-

tupleniya sotsializma, pp. 40–41.167. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 455 ff.168. Ibid., p. 455.169. Ibid., pp. 451, 459. The text of the Five-Year Plan gave consid-

erably different figures. Thus, in 1933, the population engagedin the “socialized sector” was to constitute only 9.6 percent ofthe total rural population (that is, 12.9 million people, instead ofthe 20 million forecast by the Sixteenth Party Conference) andthe arable land included in this sector was to account for only10.6 percent of the total arable land (Pyatiletny Plan, vol. 2, pt.I, pp. 323-329; Zaleski, Planning, p. 60; K.P.S.S. v re-zolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 451).

170. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 451.


171. Ibid., p. 459.172. See the article by Strumilin, an unconditional advocate of rapid

planned development, in Planovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 3 (1929),especially p. 36; also Pravda, June 2 and 16, 1929.

173. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 459.174. Ibid., pp. 459–460, 468.175. Ibid., pp. 468-469; also a series of articles in Pravda at the

beginning of 1929.176. See above, pp. 163 ff.177. In the Moscow region alone there were over 2,000 peasant

demonstrations; some of these were accompanied by acts ofviolence. The demonstrations were blamed on the kulaks, whomay indeed have instigated them, but this does not explain howit was that the kulaks were able to enlist the support of asufficient number of peasants to justify talk of peasant demon-strations significant enough to be mentioned (see Kozlova, Mos-kovskiye Kommunisty, p. 43, quoted in Cohen, Bukharin, p.330).

178. See above, p. 441.179. Zaleski, Planning, pp. 105,149; Narodnoye khozyaistvo 1970 g.,

p. 131.180. This article was published in two parts, in Pravda of May 26 and

June 6, 1929, under the titles: “Nekotorye problemy sovremen-nogo kapitalizma i teoretikov burzhuazii” (pp. 2–3) and “Teoriya‘organizovannoy bezkhozyaistvennosti’” (pp. 3–5). It is in-teresting to observe that in these writings Bukharin criticizedbourgeois theories of the “superiority” of the very largeenterprise—theories which obviously influenced the way theFive-Year Plan was conceived and the projects in it.

181. Cohen, Bukharin, p. 461, n. 272.182. At the plenum of November 10-17, 1929, Bukharin, Rykov, and

Tomsky made a joint statement in which they gave their analy-sis of the situation. It was not published, but the majority of theplenum considered it unacceptable. However, no new “organi-zational measures” were taken, for the time being, againstTomsky and Rykov, whereas Bukharin was removed from thePB (K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 542–543). A few dayslater, on November 25 the three published a “self-criticism” inwhich they declared that their “views” had “turned out to bemistaken,” and pledged themselves “to conduct a decisivestruggle against all deviations from the Party’s general line and,


above all, against the Right deviation” (Cohen, Bukharin, p.335). This “self-criticism” signified publicly the complete polit-ical defeat suffered by the three—but not the end of the attacksupon them. These were aimed chiefly at Bukharin, who wasrequired to make a fuller self-criticism on the occasion of theSixteenth Party Congress (June 26–July 3, 1930). At that con-gress Rykov and Tomsky made fresh self-criticisms, but Bukha-rin refused to follow suit. He was nevertheless reelected to theCC. After some discussion, Bukharin did eventually provide a

not put a stop to the attacks upon him. As for Rykov, despite hispolitical attitudes, he remained chairman of the Sovnarkomuntil December 1930, when he was replaced by Molotov (Co-

members of the CC, and occupied only secondary posts. How-ever, starting in 1933, Bukharin once again played a role of

accused (but not indicted) during the first of the “great trials,”that of Zinoviev and Kamenev. In August 1936 Tomsky killedhimself. At the beginning of 1938, Bukharin and Rykov wereaccused of forming an “anti-Soviet bloc” with the Trotskyists, ofhaving become agents of German and Japanese imperialism,and of a number of other crimes. They were sentenced to deathand executed.

183. V. P. Danilov, ed., Ocherki istorii kollektivizatsii selskogokhozyaistva v soyuznykh respublikakh, pp. 32–33, 74–75,quoted in Lewin, Russian Peasants, p. 428.

184. After the October Revolution, and especially under “war com-munism,” peasant practice had created three basic types ofcollective production, distinguished from each other by thedegree to which labor and means of production were socialized.In ascending order of socialization, these were the three forms:

(a) The toz, an acronym of the Russian words meaning “as-sociation for tilling the soil.” This form of collective made“common” the work required for cultivation (as a rule, only ofthe principal crops) together with the land and major equipmentneeded for this work. The rest of the land and equipment,together with some of the animals and buildings, remained withthe private farms, which thus did not disappear completely. Ingeneral, the share-out of the produce of the work done jointlywas effected, mainly, on the basis of the amount of labor timeput in by each member.

some importance (ibid., pp. 354–356). In 1936 the three were

fresh self-criticism (Pravda, November 20, 1930), but this did

hen, Bukharin, pp. 331, 349). The three were now no more than


(b) The artel involved a higher degree of socialization. Allthat remained of the individual farm was a few plots and a littlestock, the rest being collectivized. What had been producedjointly was shared out strictly on the basis of each member’scontribution in labor.

(c) In the kommuna (“commune”) there was practically com-plete socialization of all the means of production. The sharing ofwhat was produced took account not only of the labor contrib-uted by each person but also of the number and age of themembers of the different peasant families.

The artel was the form preferred by the Soviet government.Subsequently, it was the main form in which collectivizationwas to develop.

185. Postroyeniye fundamenta sotsialisticheskoy ekonomiki v SSSR1926–1932, p. 291, quoted in Lewin, Russian Peasants, p. 444,n. 88.

186. Danilov, Ocherki istorii, p. 32.187. See below, p. 495, n. 196.188. Materialy po istorii SSSR, U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, vol.

VII, pp. 230–231, 236.189. Vareikis, “O partiinom rukovodstve kolkhoza,” in Na Agrar-

nom Fronte, no. 8 (1929), pp. 64–65.190. Ibid.191. Pravda, November 7, 1929: Stalin, Works, vol. 12, pp. 124 ff.192. Ibid., p. 132.193. Pravda, December 4, 1929.194. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, p. 138.195. Ibid. This rallying of the peasants “by whole villages,” and so

on, was what was meant by “complete” (sploshnaya) collectivi-zation. See above, p. 461.

196. On December 15, 1929 (more than a month after the publicationof Stalin’s article), only between 0.1 and 5 percent of house-holds had been collectivized in 59 percent of the 1,416 rayons ofthe RSFSR (Abramov, in Danilov, Ocherki istorii, p. 96, quotedin Lewin, Russian Peasants, p. 478, n. 33). At the end of 1929,when very strong pressure was being brought to bear on thepeasants, the statistics, even though they tended to “inflate” theresults of the campaign, showed only about 10 percent of theokrugs as having undergone “complete collectivisation” (N. Iv-nitsky, “O nachalnom etape sploshnoy kollektivizatsii,” inVoprosy Istorii KPSS, no. 4 [1962], p. 62). This shows how veryunevenly the movement developed.


197. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, p. 159.198. Ibid., p. 176.199. The administrative officials who were closest to the peasantry

were in a position to appreciate better their resistance to large-scale collectivization effected without preparation. They wereopposed to a method which fixed “percentages of collectivisa-tion” without any relation to local realities. They were oftenpunished for this. In some regions, nearly half of the chairmenof village soviets were removed from their posts on variousgrounds (see the Smolensk archives, VKP 61, pp. 98–168,quoted in Fainsod, Smolensk, p. 142).

200. The mistaken idea that a general advance of the collectivizationmovement was going on sprang not only from the statementsmade by the Party leadership and the way that the press pre-sented the situation, but also from the boastful claims made bymany regional Party secretaries (themselves “caught” by theatmosphere of “competition in percentages of collectivisation”which was then developing). Thus, at the plenum of November10–17, 1929, some regional secretaries talked of mass entry bythe middle peasants into the kolkhozes, whereas fewer than 5percent of these peasants had actually joined in the regions forwhich these men were responsible (Lewin, Russian Peasants,p. 478, n. 33).

201. At the end of 1929 and the beginning of 1930 the “delegates forcollectivisation” received orders directing them to collectivizecertain localities within less than a week. For example, thedelegates for the sub-district of Sosnovsky, in the district ofTver, were given in mid-February 1930 the order to carrythrough in five days the collectivizing of the localities assignedto them. The Party leadership of the subdistrict instructed themto report at 9 A.M. on February 20, at the office of the PartyCommittee, to give an account of how they had fulfilled theirtasks. The order stated: “There can be no excuse for not fulfill-ing the tasks assigned. Those who have not accomplished theirmission will be brought to trial within 24 hours” (Ts.G.A.O.R.,collection 374, inventory 9, file 418, sheet 4, quoted inYakovtsevsky, Agrarnye otnosheniya, p. 237; also in Re-cherches internationales, no. 85 [no. 4 of 1975], p. 83).

202. See, e.g., Ts.G.A.O.R., collection 374, inventory 9, file 403,sheets 7-8; and file 418, sheet 61; quoted in Yakovtsevsky,Agrarnye otnosheniya, p. 328 (also in Recherches Inter-nationales, no. 85 [no. 4 of 1975] p. 84).


203. Ibid.204. Lewin, Russian Peasants, pp. 475–476.205. Bolshevik, no. 22 (1929), p. 19.206. See, e.g., Fainsod, Smolensk, pp. 242 ff.207. A. L. Strong, The Soviets Conquer Wheat, p. 88.208. Lewin, Russian Peasants, p. 505.209. Na Agrarnom Fronte, nos. 7–8 (1930), p . 95.210. In V. Ulashevich, ed., Zhenshchina v kolkhoze, article by Leikin,

p. 28, quoted in Lewin, Russian Peasants, p. 494. The termpodkulachnik (“abettor of kulaks”) could therefore be appliedto a poor peasant.

211. Na Agrarnom Fronte, nos. 7–8 (1930), p. 94; Bolshevik, no. 6(1930), p. 21; and also sources quoted in Lewin, Russian Peas-ants, p. 502.

212. Pashukanis, ed., 15 let sovyetskogo stroitelstva, p. 474.213. Na Agrarnom Fronte, no. 6 (1930), p. 20.214. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, pp. 197–205.215. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, pp. 548–551.216. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, pp. 198–199. The information and

analyses subsequently published showed that in fact, these“sentiments” were extremely “widespread” and had seriouslyaffected collectivization.

217. Ibid., p. 201.Ibid. Sergeant Prishibeyev is a dictatorial old soldier in a storyby Chekhov (English translation, Anglo-Soviet, Journal, vol.XVII, no. 2 [Summer 1956]).

219. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, pp. 203–204.220. Ibid., p. 205.221. Ts.G.A.O.R., collection 374, inventory 9, file 418, sheets 7 and

72, quoted in Yakovtsevsky, Agrarnye otnosheniya, p. 331. (Alsoin Recherches Internationales, no. 85 [no. 4 of 1975], p. 87.)

222. This article was published in Pravda, April 3, 1930, under thetitle: “Reply to Collective-Farm Comrades” (Stalin, Works, vol.12, pp. 207 ff.).

223. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, p. 208.224. Ibid., pp. 209–216.225. Ibid., pp. 216–217.226. It should be noted that in some regions the local authorities

intervened sooner than the CC did. Thus, on February 12, 1930,the Party Committee of Velikive Luki, an area then attached toSmolensk region, sent a circular to local Party organizations inwhich the exiling and expropriation of poor and middle peas-

218.


ants was “unconditionally prohibited” (Smolensk Archives,VKP 53, pp. 6 ff., quoted in Fainsod, Smolensk, pp. 242–243).

227. Lewin, Russian Peasants, pp. 505–506.228. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, pp. 217–218.229. Ibid., p. 197.230. Lewin, Russian Peasants, pp. 427, 515; Zaleski, Planning, p.

102; Bettelheim, La Planification soviétique, p. 33.231. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, p. 198.232. Same sources as in note 230. In the Moscow region only 7.2

percent of the households were still collectivized in June 1930,as against 73 percent in March (M. Bogdenko, IstoricheskieZapiski, no. 76, pp. 20 ff., quoted in Nove, An Economic His-tory, p. 172).

233. This question must be held over for examination in volume IIIof the present work, where the whole subject of collectivizationwill be discussed.

234. Lewin, Russian Peasants, pp. 436, 464.235. The importance of this slaughtering of cattle will be considered

in volume III of the present work.236. These points, too, will be gone into in more detail in volume III

of the present work.237. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, p. 138. Actually, the production of grain

declined sharply from 1930 on, and this situation continueduntil 1935.

238. I shall not, for the moment, consider the fact that the economictargets aimed at were not reached. Collectivization did notenable the problems of grain production, or even those of “mar-ketable production” to be “solved more effectively.” Nor did it,contrary to a widely held view, enable a better solution to befound to the problem of accumulation (i.e., the question of thetribute to be levied from the peasantry). This will also be con-sidered in volume III of the present work. Some interestingpoints on the subject are made in the article by J. F. Karez,“From Stalin to Brezhnev: Soviet Agricultural Policy in Histori-cal Perspective” (especially pp. 41–51), in James R. Millar, ed.,The Soviet Rural Community.

239. We know that, while the “resolution on Party unity” passed bythe Tenth Congress prohibited the forming of “factions,” it didnot forbid discussion. On the contrary, it assumed that anydisagreements would be “brought publicly before the wholeParty,” and it provided for the publishing of a Discussion Bulle-


tin (see volume I of this work, pp. 399–400). In fact, however,during the NEP period open discussion of differences was in-creasingly restricted—and the Discussion Bulletin never ap-peared.

240. Mao Tse-tung constantly urged the Chinese Communist Partyto avoid such practices, which weaken the Party. In 1937 hesaid: “If there were no contradictions in the Party and noideological struggles to resolve them, the Party’s life wouldcome to an end” (Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, pp.260–261). In 1942 he condemned the method of “lashing out at”those who had made mistakes (ibid., p. 262). In 1957 he de-clared, in connection with discussions taking place outside aswell as inside the Party, that even bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas should be allowed expression, so that theymight be criticized, for it is through struggle that Marxism pro-gresses. He said that, in any case, “inevitably, the bourgeoisieand petty-bourgeoisie will give expression to their ownideologies. . . . We should not use the method of suppressionand prevent them from expressing themselves, but should allowthem to do so, and at the same time argue with them and directappropriate criticism at them. . . . However, such criticismshould not be dogmatic and the metaphysical method shouldnot be used, but efforts should be made to apply the dialecticalmethod. What is needed is scientific analysis and convincingargument” (ibid., pp. 53–54

241. See above, p. 367.242. See below, p. 519.

500

3. The Bolshevik ideological formationand its transformations

The dominant role played in deciding the outcome of thelass struggles by the Bolshevik Party’s interventions in thepolitical, economic, and social life of the Soviet formation wasdue to the integration of the Party in these struggles and to theplace it occupied in the system of government—to its role, infact, as the ruling Party. This means that the Party’s interven-tions helped to impose a certain course of development uponmost of the struggles, but not necessarily that this course wasthe one that the Party intended. The degree to which thecourse and outcome of these struggles coincided with theParty’s aims depended on the adequacy to the real situation ofthe analysis, or the conception, of this situation on the basis ofwhich the Party acted, and, above all, on the social forces thatthe Party was able to rally round its policy and to mobilize.

Basically, the nature and the forms of the Party’s interven-tions were dominated by the system of ideas which, at anygiven moment, constituted, with their distinctive articulation,the Bolshevik ideological formation. This did not come fromnowhere, but was the historical product of the class strugglesand of the lessons (true or false) drawn from them, and of thepolitical relations existing within the Party and between theParty and the various classes of society.

The Bolshevik ideological formation was not something laiddown “once for all time.” It was a complex social reality,objective and subject to change. It was realized in practicesand forms of organization, as well as in the formulations em-bodied in a set of documents. This reality had definite effectsupon those whom it served as an instrument for analyzingand interpreting the world, and also for changing the world.These effects differed in accordance with the internal con-


tradictions of the ideological formation, the diversity of theplaces occupied in the social formation by those to whomBolshevism served as a guide, and the different social prac-tices in which these persons were engaged.

Marxism-Leninism was the theoretical basis of Bolshevism,but cannot be identified with the Bolshevik ideological forma-tion. That was a contradictory reality within which a constantstruggle went on between revolutionary Marxist thinking,Marxism as constituted historically, and various ideologicalcurrents which were alien to Marxism—parodying it, becausethey often borrowed its “terminology.”

The distinctions thus made call for some clarification. Theyimply that the Bolshevik ideological formation cannot, as awhole, be treated as equivalent to Marxism-Leninism. Theyimply also that revolutionary Marxist thinking cannot betreated as equivalent, at all times, to Marxism as it was histori-cally constituted in each epoch, on the basis of fusion betweenrevolutionary Marxist thinking and the organized movementof the vanguard of the proletariat. Marxism constituted in thatway signified a systematized set of ideas and practices whichenabled the revolutionary working-class movement claimingto be Marxist to deal, in the concrete conditions in which itfound itself, with the problems which it had to confront. Thesesuccessive systematizations—necessary for action, but includ-ing elements that were more or less improvised and corre-sponding to the demands, real or apparent, of a given con-juncture of the class struggle—were the Marxism of eachepoch: that of German Social Democracy, that of the SecondInternational at the end of the nineteenth century, and, in theearly twentieth century, that of the Third International, and soon.

At the core of Marxism as historically constituted, a variableplace was given to revolutionary principles and conceptionsresulting from scientific analysis carried out from thestandpoint of the proletariat’s class positions and based on thelessons drawn from the proletariat’s own struggles. The out-come of this analysis and of these lessons is the scientificnucleus of Marxism. Marxist scientific thought was not


“brought from outside” into the working class. It was a scien-tific systematization of that class’s own struggles and initia-tives. It resulted from a process of elaboration which startedfrom the masses and returned to the masses, and which in-volved a conceptual systematization.

Marxist scientific thought is not “given” once and for all: ithas to be developed, enriched, and rectified on the basis ofnew struggles and new initiatives. Substantial rectificationsare inevitable, for Marxist scientific thought, which can becalled revolutionary Marxism, has to learn from the struggleswaged by the working masses as they advance along a roadnever previously explored.

Revolutionary Marxism is not a system, but it does includeelements of the systematic, thanks to which, in the contradic-tory reality which it constitutes, the scientific knowledge thatis its nucleus plays the dominant role, enabling it to graspobjective reality and to act upon this with full awareness ofwhat is involved.

The very development of revolutionary Marxism impliesthe existence of contradictions within it 1 and the transforma-tion of these contradictions through a process which makes itpossible for scientific knowledge to be corrected and com-pleted as regards the element of objectivity which it grasps.Hence Lenin’s formulation: “We do not regard Marx’s theoryas something completed and inviolable: on the contrary, weare convinced that it has only laid the foundation-stone of thescience which socialists must develop in all directions if theywish to keep pace with life.” 2

Like every other science, therefore, revolutionary Marxismundergoes a process of development. At every stage of thisprocess some of the theoretical formulations or ideologicalconceptions3 which formed part of the revolutionary Marxismof the previous epoch are eliminated; they are thenceforthalien to it, which does not mean that they are necessarilyeliminated at once and “definitively,” either from Marxism asit is constituted historically in the revolutionary working-classinvolvement, or, still less, from the various ideological cur-rents which, though alien to Marxism, play a role in the revo-lutionary movement.


The process of transforming revolutionary Marxism and theprocess of transforming Marxism as historically constituted ineach epoch are not “parallel” processes. The former is thedevelopment of a science, whereas the latter is the transforma-tion of an ideology which has a scientific basis. Under theimpact of the difficulties experienced by the struggles of theworking class, Marxism as historically constituted in eachepoch experiences not only theoretical enrichment (con-nected with the development of scientific knowledge, itselfdue to social practice) but also impoverishment, through thefading, obscuring, or covering-up, to a greater or less degree, ofsome of the principles or ideas of revolutionary Marxism.4

All this helps to make a necessary distinction, and illustratethe meaning of a phrase of Marx’s which was no mere witti-cism: “All I know is that I am not a Marxist.” 5 By this he meantthat he refused to identify his work with the Marxism of theGerman Social Democrats, or of some other “Marxisms”—aswe see from his reaction to the way his ideas were interpretedby some Russian writers. This refusal meant rejecting thereduction of his scientific discoveries to an ideological systemsuch as that which German Social Democracy constructed inits necessary fight against Lassallism, and also in its com-promise with the latter. This system doubtless correspondedto some of the needs of the German labor movement of thetime, and was the starting point for successive changes (fromwhich, in particular, the Marxism of the Third Internationalemerged); but it excluded part of the heritage of revolutionaryMarxism 6 (and sometimes “utilized” passages from Marxwhich did not correspond to the more mature forms of hiswork). The Marxism of German Social Democracy tended to“overlook” 7 some of the analyses made by Marx after the ParisCommune, regarding the forms of political authority, the state,the organizations of the working class, the forms of propertyand appropriation, etc.8

We have seen the struggle waged by Lenin to transform theMarxism of his epoch, in order to develop it and to bring backinto it a number of fundamental theses of revolutionary Marx-ism (especially on the problem of the state), so as to combat“economism.” We have seen, too, the obstacles and resis-


tances that this struggle encountered even inside theBolshevik Party.9

The presence in the Bolshevik ideological formation of cur-rents alien to Marxism10 was a necessary consequence of theclass struggle. At different times, these currents had a more orless considerable influence on Bolshevism. One of the charac-teristic features of Lenin’s activity was his striving to exposethe theoretical roots of the conceptions which he foughtagainst. He applied this method also to the mistakes which hehimself made and acknowledged: not restricting himself to acorrection or to a self-criticism, he undertook an analysis. Thiswas an essential feature of Lenin’s practice, and one thattended to disappear from subsequent Bolshevik practice,which preferred usually to carry out “silent rectifications” thatdid not contribute to a genuine development of Marxism andleft intact the possibility of falling into the same errors again.11

However, the currents in Bolshevism that were alien toMarxism did not necessarily disappear just because they hadbeen criticized. Insofar as the social foundations on whichthey were based continued to exist, they themselves survived,though, as a rule, in modified forms.

The history of the Bolshevik ideological formation appearsas a history of the transformation of various currents whichcomposed the contradictory unity of Bolshevism, and of therelations of domination and subordination between them.

This was no “history of ideas,” but the history of the effectsupon the Bolshevik ideological formation of the changes inclass relations and class struggles, and in the way that theParty was involved in these struggles. It included periodswhen the influence of revolutionary Marxism grew and periodswhen its influence declined. We cannot trace that historyhere: it would require a number of analyses which are still tobe undertaken. But it is necessary to mention some of thecharacteristics of the process of transformation of the Bol-shevik ideological formation, and to point out that when theinfluence of currents alien to Marxism grew stronger within it,the capacity of Marxism to develop was reduced, and it tendedto “congeal,” with ready-made formulas replacing those con-


crete analyses which are, in Lenin’s words, “the soul of Marx-ism.”

The transformations undergone by the Bolshevik ideologi-cal formation were due either to the development of newknowledge or to the inhibition of old knowledge. These trans-formations had as their internal cause the contradictionswithin the Bolshevik formation itself, but their actual move-ment was dictated by the class struggles that went on in theSoviet social formation, and by the impact that these struggleshad on social relations and practices, especially on the condi-tions for mass social experiment. The changes undergone bythe Bolshevik ideological formation produced, owing to theposition held by the Bolshevik Party in the system of ideologi-cal apparatuses, reactions which affected the Soviet formationitself, by way of the Party’s interventions.

Let it be noted here that in the concrete history of theBolshevik ideological formation there took place a gradualinhibition of certain concepts which made it possible toanalyze the movement of reproduction of commodity andcapitalist relations, the existence of which is manifestedthrough the forms “value,” “price,” “wages,” and “profit.”Gradually, these forms came to be treated more and more as“empty forms,” “integuments,” which were used for “practi-cal” (or “technical”) purposes (accounting in money terms,“efficiency” of management, etc.); whereas awareness of thesocial relations which they manifest (and conceal) was inhib-ited in the Bolshevik ideological formation. This inhibitioncorresponded to the increasing dominance of the ideologicalnotions of bourgeois political economy: it was still possible toconsider the problem of the quantity of value, but no longer toask why such forms still existed. Here let us recall an observa-tion of Marx’s: “Political economy . . . has never once askedthe question why this content has assumed that particularform. . . .” 12

Yet it is only by asking such a question that one can gobeyond empirical knowledge, covering the apparent relationbetween forms (reality as it seems to itself [sich darstellt]), toreal scientific knowledge, knowledge of the real movement.


Empirical knowledge can orient action in a general way, butonly scientific knowledge can give it precise guidance, ena-bling it actually to achieve its aim, because such knowledgemakes possible analysis, foresight, and action with full aware-ness of what is involved.

The inhibition, during certain periods, of some of the scien-tific knowledge making up revolutionary Marxism was a resultof the class struggle, which engendered a variety of ideologi-cal currents. What happened toward the end of the NEP haddecisive political significance: it reduced the Bolshevik Par-ty’s capacity to analyze, to foresee, and to act in full awarenessof what was involved.

Another observation needs to be made. The internal con-tradictions of Bolshevism, the struggles fought out within itbetween Marxism-Leninism and various other ideologicaltrends, were not directly due to the different “tendencies”whose conflicts mark the history of the Bolshevik Party. These“tendencies” were themselves contradictory combinationsof ideological currents that were present in the Bolshevikideological formation.

The internal contradictions of Bolshevism made themselvesfelt in the ideology of the Party majority as well as in that ofthe various oppositions. The latter were differentiated by theirparticular ways of combining the ideas of revolutionary Marx-ism with ideas that were alien to it. As time went by, thesecombinations underwent variations that also affected theideology of the Party majority, which was by no means alwaysidentical. Furthermore, the changes this ideology underwentdid not correspond simply to a deepening of revolutionaryMarxism or an extension of its influence within the Bolshevikideological formation (as is suggested by the idea of a “lineardevelopment” which takes no account of the class struggleand its ideological effects). They corresponded also to thesetbacks which restored life and prestige (in barely modifiedforms) to ideological configurations which had previouslybeen recognized as being strongly marked by ideas alien torevolutionary Marxism. This was the case toward the end ofthe NEP, when the Party majority rallied round the idea of“maximum development of the production of means of pro-


duction,” 13 to be accomplished through maximum accumula-tion obtained chiefly by exacting “tribute” from the peas-antry.14

These same ideas had earlier been promoted by Preo-brazhensky and the Trotskyist opposition, and had been cor-rectly condemned in the name of defense of the worker-peasant alliance.15

If we look at the principal documents approved at various times by the leading organs of the Bolshevik Party, togetherwith the speeches, books, and articles of most of its leaders,we can see that the Bolshevik ideological formation was in-deed a battlefield where revolutionary Marxism was con-stantly in combat with ideas that were alien to it.

During the first half of the 1920s, the principal formulationsissued by the Party leaders, and embodied in the resolutionsadopted at that time, either reaffirmed the essential theses ofrevolutionary Marxism or else constituted a certain deepeningof basic Marxist positions. This was so as regards the demandsof the worker-peasant alliance, the role to be assigned to theorganizing of the masses in many different ways, the need totackle the problems of building socialism, the indispensabilityof developing soviet democracy. During those years, thedominance of the ideas of revolutionary Marxism tended, onthe whole, to grow stronger. However, as we have seen, anumber of positions of principle or decisions taken failed toexercise any broad and lasting influence on the practices of thestate machine and the Party. This was often the case withregard to democratic centralism, soviet democracy, economicand political relations with the peasant masses, and relationsbetween the Russian Republic and the other Soviet repub-lics.16

After 1925–1926, various changes affected the Bolshevikideological formation, contributing to the reinforcement ofideological elements that were alien to revolutionary Marx-ism. The party then launched into an industrial policy whichaggravated the contradictions within the state industrial sec-tor, and engaged in practices detrimental to the firmness of theworker-peasant alliance. At the same time, it became blinderto the negative effects of these practices, which seemed to it to


have been dictated as “necessities” inherent in the building ofsocialism.

In order to make the foregoing more explicit we must surveysome of the elements alien to revolutionary Marxism whichwere present in the Bolshevik ideological formation, and showthe place that these elements occupied at different moments,together with some of their political consequences.

I. The internal contradictions of theBolshevik ideological formation

I am not going to undertake here a systematic examinationof the elements alien to revolutionary Marxism which were atwork within the Bolshevik ideological formation, or to analyzethe historical conditions responsible for their appearance anddevelopment. This would form the subject of a specific studywhich remains to be made. The following remarks are in-tended mainly to show the presence of certain elements whichplayed an important part in the ideological struggles and thepolitical interventions, and, in certain cases, to indicate someof the conditions in which they appeared. The limited purposeof these remarks means that the order in which they are set outis not intended to reveal the existence of some “central”ideological theme that may have played a dominant role inrelation to the elements alien to revolutionary Marxism. The order in which the questions are examined is merely thatwhich seems easiest—starting with themes that are relativelywell known and going on to deal with others that are less wellknown.

(a) The economist-technicist conception ofthe productive forces and the primacyaccorded to the development oftechnology17

For revolutionary Marxism, the class struggle is the drivingforce of history, and so history, as long as classes exist, is the


history of class struggle.18 This struggle leads necessarily tothe dictatorship of the proletariat, itself a transition to theabolition of all classes, to a classless society.19 Class struggles,like classes themselves, have as their material basis the formsand modes of production in which producers and nonprodu-cers are integrated. They transform the conditions of produc-tion, cause new productive forces to emerge, break up oldproduction relations, and engender new relations. Knowledgeof the inner laws of the process of transformation of the pro-duction relations is not a necessary constituent factor in thisprocess. The latter usually presents itself to the mind inideological forms—legal, political, religious, artistic,philosophical—which result from the contradictions of mate-rial life. It is through these ideological forms that the strugglesare usually fought out, and not necessarily on the basis ofknowledge of real relations20 which result from a materialistanalysis of the movement of history. Characteristic of Bol-shevism was its principled application of such an analysis.Nevertheless, in some Bolshevik documents, the interlinkingof the different factors entering into the analysis (classes, pro-duction relations, productive forces) was not what was properto revolutionary Marxism. We must pause to consider thisquestion.21

(1) “Development of the productiveforces” and “development of society”

A good illustration of what has just been said is to be foundin Stalin’s Dialectical and Historical Materialism.22 Althoughit is later in date than the period being studied in this book, Ishall refer to it here because it is the most systematic exposi-tion of what gradually became, after the late 1920s, the domi-nant conception in the Bolshevik Party.23

I shall start by indicating how those theses of Dialecticaland Historical Materialism to which attention will chiefly bepaid are situated in the general structure of this work. The firstpart of it, about which I shall say only a little, is devoted toexpounding dialectical materialism.24 Here we find recalledcertain propositions of Lenin’s regarding the role of internal


contradictions in the development of things. References to“struggle of opposite tendencies” and to “the class struggle ofthe proletariat” illustrate these propositions. Two points callfor emphasis:

a. In the second part of the work, devoted to historicalmaterialism,25 the class struggle as driving force of historybarely gets mentioned.

b. The first part contains an explicit critique of Bogdanov’s“fideism,” 26 whose incompatibility with Marxism is verybriefly mentioned,27 but in the second part we find no criti-cism of Bogdanov’s “sociological” conceptions28 (which werecontinued by Proletkult29). This deficiency is not unconnectedwith the actual content of the second part of the work, whichwe shall now examine.

The fundamental thesis propounded in the second part ofDialectical and Historical Materialism is that “the determin-ing force of social development” is constituted by “the con-crete conditions of the material life of society.” This thesis iscomplemented by another statement—that “the party of theproletariat must not base its activity on abstract ‘principles ofhuman reason,’ but on the concrete conditions of the materiallife of society, as the determining force of social development:not on the good wishes of ‘great men’ but on the real needs ofdevelopment of the material life of society.” 30

These propositions are presented as being in conformitywith those formulated by Marx in his 1859 preface to theContribution to the Critique of Political Economy.31 Actually,they include a number of specific features which give them adifferent meaning from that of Marx’s revolutionary theses. Tobe observed, in particular, are:

a. The use of the formulas “social development” or “de-velopment of society,” thus presenting “society” as an entitydeveloping historically. They take the place held in the 1859preface by the expression, “process of social, political andintellectual life,”32 which emphasizes the conception of a so-cial process and does not mention “society” either as “sub-ject” or “object.”

b. The use of the expression “concrete conditions of the


material life of society,” a vague notion to which Stalin’s essayendeavors later on to give a more precise content (as we shallsee).

c. The introduction of the notion of “real needs of de-velopment of the material life of society.” This implies thatthere are “needs of society,” not at the level of the reproduc-tion of the production relations (where this notion is used byMarx, when he speaks of “social needs”) but at that of some“development of society” on which “the party of the pro-letariat must base its activity.”

This notion of “needs of development” is substituted for theobjective contradictions and class conflicts, and also for theneeds of the masses, on which the party of the proletariat must,in fact, base itself so as to ensure, not the “development ofsociety” but the revolutionary transformation of the produc-tion relations.

Thus, the formulations present in this part of the essayreplace the concepts of revolutionary Marxism with differentones, derived (in spite of apparent “similarities”) from a dif-ferent conception of the movement of history. In this concep-tion, the dominant figure is the “concrete conditions of thematerial life of society,” while knowledge of the “needs ofdevelopment” replaces analysis of class struggles and con-tradictions.

As Stalin proceeds, he makes clear the significance of thisdominant figure—all the more dominant because it is said tobe the “determining force of social development.”

Among the “conditions of the material life of society” Stalinmentions, first of all, nature which surrounds society, geo-graphical environment.33 However, he declines to see this“environment” as “the chief force determining the physiog-nomy of society” because “the changes and development ofsociety proceed at an incomparably faster rate than thechanges and development of geographical environment.”34

After mentioning also “growth of population” as being amongthe “conditions of material life of society”, and after rejectingthe idea that it can be “the determining force of social de-velopment,” Stalin says: “This force, historical materialism


holds, is the method of procuring the means of life necessaryfor human existence, the mode of production of material val-ues. . . .35

In this formulation, as can be seen from the whole passage, a“technicist” element predominates. It makes the mode of pro-duction (and not the contradictions in it) the principal force of“social development.” The mode of production is not con-ceived as the contradictory unity of the relations of productionand the productive forces, but as an organized sum of ele-ments or aspects which the passage enumerates. One of theseaspects is constituted by the “productive forces” (themselvesmade up of the following “elements”: the instruments of pro-duction, the people who operate them thanks to a certain“production experience” and “labour-skill”). The other “as-pect” is the “relations of production.” 36

This enumeration, which mentions neither classes nor so-cial contradictions, throws no light on what is the “chief force”of “the development of society.” The latter is, first, simplyaffirmed, and then identified with the development of produc-tion, of which it is said that it “never stays at one point for along time.”37 In its turn, this “development” is identified withthe “development of the productive forces,” which thus ap-pears as the deus ex machina, the source of all “developmentof society”: for it is said that the latter always depends on thedevelopment of the productive forces which itself dependsprimarily on the instruments of production.38

At this point we find ourselves faced with formulations dif-fering radically from those of revolutionary Marxism, forwhich the historical process is determined, in the last analysisby class contradictions. The material basis of these is not merechange in the instruments of production but the contradic-tions in the economic basis (the contradictory unity of theproduction relations and the productive forces), and they de-velop by way of the ideological forms which these contradic-tions themselves engender. Revolutionary Marxism does notascribe the development of the productive forces to a spon-taneous process, or to “contradictions” external to the mode ofproduction, counterposing “society” to “nature.”


However, according to the conception developed in Dialec-tical and Historical Materialism, it is the instruments of pro-duction, and the changes which these undergo as a result ofthe ceaseless development of production, that determinechanges in society.39 Social classes and their struggles do notplay the role of driving force here—indeed, in this part ofStalin’s work they do not figure at all.40 As for productionrelations, they appear to lead, somehow, an existence which isexternal to the productive forces: they merely “influence” thedevelopment of these forces “accelerating or retarding” it, butthis development must, “sooner or later,” lead to the transfor-mation of these relations, so that they eventually “come in-to correspondence with . . . the level of development of theproductive forces”—otherwise there occurs “a crisis of pro-duction, a destruction of productive forces.”41

This outline of the conception of “social development”which is given in Dialectical and Historical Materialism hasbeen necessary for more than one reason. First, because thesystematic form of this work makes it possible to considerwhat relation the ideas contained in it bear to Marx’s analyses.Secondly, because this work poses the problem of the objec-tive basis for the increasing predominance of the conceptionswhich it contains.

The remarks which follow are an attempt to answer thesetwo questions. They concern also some other contradictoryaspects of the Bolshevik ideological formation, which will bedealt with later.

(2) The conception of “social development”as an effect of the development of the“productive forces,” and Marx’sanalyses

The formulations of Dialectical and Historical Materialism,summarized and discussed in the foregoing pages undoubt-edly bear some relationship to certain writings by Marx. Thisgives them a sort of “Marxist authenticity,” the narrow limitsof which need to be recognized, however, if we do not wish to


fall into a “talmudistic” notion of Marxism which tends toreduce it to a commentary on, or a rearrangement of, quota-tions isolated from their context. We need to distinguish in thewritings of Marx and Engels between what was radically new,contributing vitally to the formation of revolutionary Marxism,and what was merely repetition of old ideas, or provisionalpoints of transition toward revolutionary positions andanalyses.42 Concretely, as regards the relations between socialchanges (and more especially changes in production relations)and changes in the material conditions of production, we findin the works of Marx and Engels two major categories offormulation.

The earlier category affirms essentially a materialist view ofhistory, stressing that history is not the outcome of men’s ideasbut of the conditions of production. This is, very broadly, theposition of Marx in his youthful writings, particularly TheGerman Ideology and The Poverty of Philosophy, which datefrom 1846 and 1847, respectively.43 This same position is setforth strikingly in a letter addressed by Marx on December 28,1846, to one of his Russian correspondents, Pavel Annenkov,who had emigrated to France. In this letter Marx says:

Assume a particular state of development in the productiveforces of man and you will get a particular form of commerce andconsumption. Assume particular stages of development in pro-duction, commerce and consumption, and you will have a corre-sponding social constitution, a corresponding organization of thefamily, of orders or of classes, in a word, a corresponding civilsociety, and you will get particular political conditions which areonly the official expression of civil society.44

Taken by itself, this formulation makes the totality of socialrelations and practices the “expression” of the “productiveforces.” “Society” is here presented as an “expressive total-ity,” which is not contradictory, and the changes in whichseem to depend upon “development in production.” The cen-tral role played by the revolutionary struggle of the masses inthe process of social change does not appear here, whereas itis stressed by Marx in those of his writings which develop a


revolutionary and dialectical materialist position. The contentof these writings is incompatible with a conception of “soci-ety” forming an “expressive totality,” for they show that thedriving force of history is the movement of internal contradic-tions and the class struggles. These formulations are set forthin a particularly striking way in the Manifesto of the Com-munist Party, but they are not absent from earlier writings,including the letter to Annenkov which I have just quoted.

Only gradually do formulations consistently expressing ma-terialist and revolutionary positions become dominant inMarx’s writings. And even when this has happened, the earliertype of formulation re-surfaces (which should not surprise us),at least in modified forms. This is what we see, for instance, inthe case of the 1859 preface to the Contribution to theCritique of Political Economy. This preface presents a dialec-tic of contradiction between productive forces and productionrelations which leaves the reader to assume the existence of a “devel-opment” of the productive forces that is autonomous, soto speak, with its movement partly unexplained. It neverthe-less remains true that, in this work, the transformation of socialrelations is not related directly to the “development of theproductive forces,” but to the contradictions which this de-velopment entails, and to the ideological forms in which “menbecome conscious” of the contradictions and fight out theirconflicts.45

In volume I of Capital, however, some formulations veryclose to those of 1846 are still present. Certain ones evensometimes accentuate the importance attributed to technol-ogy. Thus, Marx writes: “Technology reveals the active rela-tion of man to nature, the direct process of the production ofhis life, and thereby it also lays bare the process of the produc-tion of the social relations of his life, and of the mental concep-tions that flow from these relations.” 46

In such passages, social relations and their changes areapparently ascribed to technology, while the social conditionsgoverning the changes in technology are passed over in si-lence.

The writings which break away from the difficulties bound


up with the juxtaposition of two types of formulation are thosein which Marx ascribes the movement of history, and so, also,the development of the productive forces and even of“technology” to the changing of social relations and thestruggles between classes. These formulations go muchfurther than those quoted already: they are at the heart ofrevolutionary Marxism.

On this point I shall confine myself to two examples, takenfrom writings of 1865 and concerned with the development ofcapitalist relations. Dealing with this question, Marx showsthat capitalist relations do not result from a “technologicalchange” but from class struggle—in this case, bourgeois classstruggle. This change corresponds to what Marx calls “theformal subsumption of labour under capital,” which involvesconstraint to perform surplus labor. Marx points out that whencapital begins to subordinate wage labor and in this waydevelops new social relations, it does so on the basis of theexisting technology. As he says, “technologically speaking[Marx’s emphasis—C. B.] the labour-process goes on as be-fore”: what is new is “that it is now subordinated to capital.” 47

It is precisely on the basis of these new (or modified) rela-tions that new productive forces develop, namely, those thatcorrespond to the development of machine production. Marxwrites: “On the basis of that change, . . . specific changes inthe mode of production are introduced which create newforces of production, and these in turn influence the mode ofproduction so that new real conditions come into being.” 48

Here we see a real dialectical movement, in which whatchanges first is not the “productive forces,” or the “instru-ments of production,” but social relations, and this as theresult of class struggle, of bourgeois class struggle. We aretherefore very far away from the affirmation made in Dialecti-cal and Historical Materialism that changes in production“always begin with changes and development of the produc-tive forces, and in the first place, with changes and develop-ment of the instruments of production.” 49

It is one of the distinctive features of revolutionary Marxismthat it reckons with the possibility and necessity of first of all


changing production relations, in order to ensure, under cer-tain conditions, the development of the productive forces. Itwas toward the end of the 1920s that this feature of revolution-ary Marxism tended to become inhibited from the Bolshevikideological formation, in favor of a mechanical materialistposition, which emphasized in a one-sided way the changingof the instruments of production.50

(3) The objective basis of the increasingpredominance in the Bolshevikideological formation of a conception of“social development” set in motion bytechnological changes

We need to ask the question: what happened toward the endof the 1920s which accounts for the tendency for mechanicalmaterialist conceptions to become predominant in the Bol-shevik ideological formation? Or, to go further, what was theobjective, social basis of this tendency?

Briefly, we can say that this basis was provided by thenature of the relations that developed between the BolshevikParty and the masses. Toward the end of the 1920s these hadbecome essentially relations of exteriority. This is clear wherethe peasant masses were concerned (and they formed by farthe majority of the population), since the Party was almostcompletely absent from the rural areas. But it is true also, eventhough to a lesser degree, where a large part of the workingclass was concerned, for a high proportion of the mostpoliticized elements of that class, once they had joined theParty, were very quickly absorbed into the various ap-paratuses, so that they left the working class.

During the 1920s, the Party struggled to prevent this state ofaffairs from becoming established, but the successes achievedwere very limited.

The nature of the relations between the Bolshevik Party andthe masses was due, in the first place, to the conditions whichexisted at the beginning of our period, at the start of the NEP;to the chaos and disorganization that prevailed at that time; to


the massive predominance in the machinery of state of ele-ments alien to the working class, over whom the Party exer-cised only formal control; and to the split that had occurredbetween the Soviet power and the majority of the peasantry atthe end of “war communism”; etc.51

Subsequently, lack of experience, and the weight of theideological elements alien to revolutionary Marxism whichwere present in the Bolshevik ideological formation, pre-vented decisive successes being achieved in the developmentof firm relations of interiority between the Party and the mas-ses.

As a result, the Bolshevik Party was able to render onlylimited aid to the struggle of the masses for a revolutionarytransformation of social relations, the struggle which alonecould open the way to a socialist development of the produc-tive forces.

This struggle did exist, being carried on by the most ad-vanced elements of the masses in town and country, but,through not being sufficiently united and supported by theBolshevik Party, it did not lead to revolutionary changes. TheParty’s lack of attention to and adequate support for the strug-gles of the poor and middle peasants had particularly seriousconsequences in this connection. The same applies to theParty’s inability to help the production conferences to result ina revolutionizing of the production relations.52

Toward the end of the NEP period it was thus difficult tosecure a further increase in production through a mass strug-gle bringing about a change in production relations. Underthese conditions, increased production seemed to dependabove all upon a rapid “modernization” of technology,realized by means of massive investment, the resources forwhich would be mobilized by state action, and it was from this“modernization” that the transformation of social relationswas expected to follow. The stress laid upon the role oftechnology corresponded, at the same time, to the growingweight in society of the technicians and cadres, separated fromthe masses—especially the heads of the big enterprises and ofthe state’s central economic organs.

The situation which developed in this way constituted the


objective basis for the strengthening, within the Bolshevikideological formation, of elements alien to revolutionaryMarxism. This strengthening not only contributed to decisiveimportance being accorded to technology and technicians, andto state centralization, but also had the result that Bolshevismreformulated the relations between ideological and technolog-ical changes.

(b) Ideological changes and technologicalchanges

One of the tasks that the Bolshevik Party strove to carry outwas to ensure that the masses mastered revolutionary ideas,which presupposed rejection by the workers and peasants ofthe old ideas—religion, superstitions, acceptance of hierarchi-cal relations, etc. However, the way that this task was under-taken by the Party shows that, within the Bolshevik ideologi-cal formation, there were increasingly dominant, toward theend of the 1920s, mechanical materialist conceptions whichtrusted above all in changes in the conditions of production tobring about a “change in ideas,” or, as it is sometimes put, a“change of mentality.”

An especially significant example of this mechanistic con-ception is provided by the way the problem of the penetrationof socialist ideas among the peasantry was treated. Stalin dis-cussed this problem in his speech “Concerning Questions ofAgrarian Policy in the U.S.S.R.,” on December 27, 1929, whenthe policy of mass collectivization was being put into effect.

In this speech, Stalin said:

A great deal of work has still to be done to remould the peasantcollective farmer, to set right his individualistic mentality and totransform him into a real working member of a socialist society.And the more rapidly the collective farms are provided withmachines, the more rapidly will this be achieved. . . . The greatimportance of the collective farms lies precisely in that theyrepresent the principal base for the employment of machineryand tractors in agriculture, that they constitute the principalbase for remoulding the peasant, for changing his mentality inthe spirit of socialism.53


This formulation shows that the transition to collectivizationwas not regarded as having to result from a process of strugglewhich, through self-education of the peasant masses, wouldensure the development of the ideas of socialism among them.On the contrary, it was the use of machinery and tractors thatwas to be the means to “set right” the “individualistic mental-ity” of the peasants. Similarly, the “great importance of thecollective farms” was not that they would entail a change inproduction relations but that they were “the principal base forthe employment of machinery and tractors.”

According to this conception, therefore, it was not the peas-ants who were to transform themselves through class strug-gles and the lessons they drew from their experience, with theParty’s help, but the peasants who were to be transformedbecause they were to be acted upon by means of technology.54

In presenting the problem of the ideological transformationof the peasantry in terms not of class struggle but of prelimi-nary material changes,55 Stalin was not defending a merely“personal” position. This position was then the one held byalmost the entire Party. And it was a position that related not tothe peasantry only, but also to the working class. The Partylooked forward, as a result of the numerical growth of theworking class, its integration in modern technology, and thedevelopment of the towns (that is, as a result of a certainnumber of material changes), to a transformation of the“ideas” of a working class which was of immediately peasantorigin. Hence, for example, a resolution of the plenum of April1928, which considered as essential for the building ofsocialism “the rapid growth of large-scale industry on thebasis of modern technology . . . , the growth of the towns andindustrial centres, the growth, in quantity and quality alike, ofthe working class.”56

The nature of the mechanical link thus alleged to existbetween ideological changes and technological changes (in-cluding those affecting habitat) may be seen as a “particularcase” of the thesis which sees in the “development of theproductive forces” the driving force of the “development ofsociety.” However, this is not entirely correct, for what isinvolved here is not so much the ideological superstructure


corresponding to a certain mode of production as the “psy-chology,” the “mentality,” of the workers and peasants, and the “action” upon this of the environment, and, above all, ofthe instruments of production and the technological charac-teristics of the labor process. Here we are dealing with posi-tions which are remote from revolutionary Marxism, andwhich lead to the posing of “psychological” problems while adecisive role is accorded not to class struggles but to thetechnological conditions of the labor-process.57

The effects of the growing predominance of “economist-technicist” conceptions were manifold. They helped to giveprevalence to the idea that in building socialism what wasmost important was “building its material basis,” and that itwas necessary to adopt a policy of accelerated industrializa-tion in which absolute priority must be given to heavy indus-try. These conceptions favored the decisive role attributed tothe development of machine production and “modern”technology: hence the slogan of the 1930s, “technique decideseverything,”58 which opened the way for strengthening theposition of the technicians and granting a privileged role to“science” and scientists.

Above all, conceptions such as these inhibited the role ofproletarian class struggle and revolutionary mass action, re-placing it with the struggle for production and for the de-velopment of the productive forces, which were expected toproduce the most radical social changes, including the disap-pearance in due course of the division between manual andmental labor.59

The growing predominance within the Bolshevik ideologi-cal formation of the conceptions mentioned was due funda-mentally to the contradictions which were developing in theSoviet formation, and the limited means available to the Bol-shevik Party for dealing with them through action by themasses. Under these conditions the Party, in order to copewith the problems confronting it, strove to increase productionas quickly as possible by means of technological changes, andit expected that these would result in ideological changes thatmust strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In this way, oblivion came to be increasingly the fate of


Marx’s analyses showing the necessity, if the revolution was toadvance, of ideological changes that were not at all the out-come of technological changes, but rather of revolutionarymass struggle, smashing the old social and ideological rela-tions and making possible the building of new relations. Sucha struggle was not a “struggle of ideas” but a class struggle,destroying old practices and old social relations, realized inideological apparatuses, and making possible the building ofnew relations and new practices.

As regards the formation and development of ideas, that is,of ideological relations and the practices associated with them,we must distinguish between Marx’s writings about the ideaswhich correspond to a mode of production which is alreadydominant and those which deal with the development of revo-utionary ideas.

The writings in which Marx deals with the “dominantideas” are the better known—such as the passage where hesays that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch theruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force ofsociety is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” 60 Ifthe writings that Marx devoted to the dominant ideology arethe most numerous, this is because it was of decisive impor-tance politically, in the period when he was writing, to combatthe idealist prejudice according to which the dominant ideascould be “swept away” without struggling against the mate-rial domination of the class whose dominance wasstrengthened by these ideas. The fewness of the writings inwhich Marx deals with the development of revolutionaryideas is due no doubt, to the very small amount of experienceavailable in his time that was relevant to the conditions for thisdevelopment, the conditions enabling the proletariat to exer-cise its ideological hegemony.61

In any case, the analyses of Marx,62 and also those of Lenin,devoted to the conditions for the development and appropria-tion of revolutionary ideas by the masses are relatively few.However, quite apart from the relative frequency or infre-quency of a particular kind of writing in Marx’s works, whataccounts for the pushing into the background, in the Bolshevik


ideological formation, of the decisive and indispensable roleof action by the masses in the changing of social relations ingeneral, and ideological relations in particular, is the increas-ing role played in reality by the State, which gave rise to theidea of the “revolution from above.”

(c) The idea of the “revolution from above”

This idea appeared in fairly clear-cut form for the first time inthe resolution of the Sixteenth Party Conference which rat-ified the First Five-Year Plan. This resolution declared thatthe building of socialism required the concentration not onlyof the forces of the Party and of the working class but also—what was new—of the forces of the State.63 In this resolutionthe building of socialism was shown as calling not for thedevelopment, first and foremost, of the initiative of the masses,and consequently the withering-away of the state—what Marxmeant when he showed that the State is a power separatedfrom the masses, appropriating their forces in order to usethese against them—but, on the contrary, and contradictingthe lessons of the Paris Commune and of The State and Revo-lution, for strengthening of the State.64

In this way there emerged the thesis of a “revolution fromabove,” to be accomplished not by the masses but by the State,on the “initiative” of the latter, to which the masses weremerely to give their “support.”

The idea of the “revolution from above” was explicitlypresent in the official account of the large-scale collectiviza-tion carried out from the end of 1929 on. Speaking of this, theHistory of the C.P.S.U.(B.) approved by the CC declared that,“The distinguishing feature of this revolution is that it wasaccomplished from above, on the initiative of the state, anddirectly supported from below. . . .” 65 However, we knowfrom Marx and Engels that a “revolution’’ accomplished fromabove, even if it be supported by the masses, is no true revolu-tion.66

Thus, at the end of the NEP period, the role of the Statebecame primordial, both in reality (where it was determined


by the evolution of class relations, which favored the de-velopment of the most up-to-date techniques and the State’scentralization of financial resources) and in the Bolshevikideological formation. At this second level we observe a pro-found transformation of this ideological formation, which en-tailed increasing departure from the positions of revolutionaryMarxism as these were set out in the works of Marx, Engels,and Lenin (especially in The State and Revolution).67

It is not possible to review here all the passages in revolu-tionary Marxism which deal with the question of the State,especially in relation to the dictatorship of the proletariat.However, these passages and the theses they set forth are soimportant, and they were so thoroughly inhibited from theBolshevik ideological formation from the end of NEP on, thata few of them must be mentioned.

The first point to be recalled is that “the state of the dictator-ship of the proletariat” is only that in so far as it is, at one andthe same time, a state and not a state, with the second aspectmore important than the first, and becoming more and moreimportant as proletarian power is strengthened. Hence En-gels’ remark in March 1875, in a letter to Bebel: “The wholetalk about the state should be dropped, especially since theCommune, which was no longer a state in the proper sense ofthe word. . . . We would therefore propose to replace stateeverywhere [in the Gotha Programme] by Gemeinwesen, agood old German word which can very well convey the mean-ing of the French word ‘commune.’ ”68

Marx’s observations in The Civil War in France are alsohighly significant. They deal with those features of the pro-letariat’s political rule which make it possible for this rule tobecome increasingly a non-state, by causing the separationbetween the machinery of government and the masses to dis-appear. In the conjuncture of the class struggles at the end ofthe 1920s these very features (which had not been stronglypresent in the preceding years) tended themselves to disap-pear.

In The Civil War in France, drawing lessons from the Paris


Commune, Marx contrasted the forms of proletarian rule withstate forms which make possible the oppression and exploita-tion of the working people. He shows how the “centralizedstate machinery,” with its “military, bureaucratic” and otherorgans, “entoils [enmeshes] the living civil society like a boaconstrictor.” To this machinery there corresponds “the regu-lated plan of a state power, with a systematic and hierarchicdivision of labour.” It gives rise to a “state interest” whichis administered by a bureaucratic body of “state priestswith exactly determined hierarchical functions.” Marx seesthis bureaucratic body as a “deadening incubus,” “a hostof state vermin,” which “serves as a means of annihilat-ing . . . all aspirations for the emancipation of the popularmasses.” 69

Analyzing the Paris Commune, he shows that it not onlybrought about the elimination of the bourgeoisie’s politicalpower but was also a revolution against the State itself. Hesays explicitly: “This was . . . a revolution not against this orthat, Legitimate, Constitutional, Republican or Imperialistform of state power. It was a revolution against the State itself,of this super-naturalist abortion of society,” upon which isbased a “centralised and organised governmental powerusurping to be the master instead of the servant of society.” Itwas because it was a revolution against the State, “the reab-sorption of the state power by society . . . by the popularmasses themselves, forming their own force instead of theorganised force of their suppression,” that the Commune was“the political form of their social emancipation,” or “the polit-ical form . . . of the liberation of labour from the usurpation[slaveholding] of the monopolists of the means of labour.”Marx explains that “the Commune is not the social movementof the working class . . . but the organised means of action.” It“does not [do] away with the class struggles through which theworking classes strive for the abolition of all classes, andtherefore of all [class rule] . . . but it affords the rationalmedium in which the class struggle can run through its differ-ent phases in the most rational and humane way. It could start


violent reactions and as violent revolutions. It begins theemancipation of labour—its great goal—by doing away with theunproductive and mischievous work of the state para-sites. . . .” 70

We know that, after October 1917, the Soviet political sys-tem, which at first reproduced many of the features of the ParisCommune, underwent changes which resulted in the massesbecoming more and more separated from the organs of powerLenin analyzed this evolution at the time and stressed thenecessity of returning to the principles of the Commune—though, in the complex situation at the end of “war com-munism” this necessity seemed to him less urgent than theefforts which were indispensable if the country was to besaved from famine and chaos.71 During the NEP period theneed to go back to the principles of the Paris Commune wasreasserted, but without this resulting in any definite proposals.It was mainly a question of “restricting” and “checking on”bureaucracy rather than of doing away with it. After 1928–1929, when rapid industrialization together with collectiviza-tion taking the form of a “revolution from above” were seen asthe first-priority tasks, there was no more talk of the ParisCommune. On the contrary, emphasis was laid uponstrengthening the State and on the authority of itsfunctionaries, integrated in a highly hierarchical system ofrelations. This was a change in the Bolshevik ideological for-mation which inhibited an essential component of revolution-ary Marxism.

This inhibition did not take place in the “realm of ideas,” itwas the result of real changes and, above all, of uncontrolledcontradictions which led to increasing use of coercion indealing with the masses. The strengthening of state forms ofrule which accompanied this process, together with the sup-port given by a section of the masses to the policy of collectivi-zation and industrialization, did indeed make it possible toobtain a certain number of remarkable material results. Thiscontributed to the development of voluntarist illusions, whichwe have already noted were characteristic of the period which


saw the end of the NEP and the beginning of the implementa-tion of the First Five-Year Plan.

(d) Juridical form of ownership andproduction relations

Identification of juridical forms of ownership with produc-tion relations, against which Lenin had warned the Party,72

and which was related to the “illusions of jurisprudence”spoken of by Marx,73 was, as we know, one of the essentialfeatures of the “simplified Marxism” which was tending tobecome dominant in the Bolshevik ideological formation.After the end of the 1920s the significance of a certain numberof theses of revolutionary Marxism concerning the problems offorms of ownership and forms of appropriation was increas-ingly obscured. The development of Marx’s views on thissubject, therefore, could not but be “forgotten.” This circum-stance makes it necessary for me to recall what the nature ofthat development actually was.

Fundamentally, until the beginning of 1850, Marx and Eng-els stressed the role to be played by state ownership in theexpropriation of the bourgeoisie. This was their position in theManifesto. After 1850, however, formulations concerning stateownership became less and less frequent, and what Marx andEngels put in the forefront was the concept of social appropria-tion. Thus, in his 1895 introduction to The Class Struggles inFrance, Engels pointed out that it was in this book, and in The18th Brumaire that Marx first declared himself for “the appro-priation of the means of production by society.” 74 Consideringthe role previously assigned by Marx to state ownership, andthe contrast later so firmly made by him (especially after theParis Commune) between “state” and “society,” this formula-tion is highly significant.

However, the Bolshevik ideological formation as it was atthe end of the 1920s “overlooked” this distinction, for practi-cal purposes. The twofold result was that production relations


were identified with ownership, and state ownership withsocial appropriation.

In fact, these identifications had seemed “obvious” to manyParty members since the period of “war communism.” This“obviousness” acquired new, decisive importance from theend of 1925 on, in connection with the increasing role of stateintervention in the economic basis (the first annual plans, inthe form of “control figures,” the increase in investment byway of the state budget, etc.). Numerous undialectical formu-lations regarding the working of the state-owned enterprisesmade their appearance.

This happened, for example, in Stalin’s political report ofDecember 1925 to the Party’s Fourteenth Congress. In thisreport, as we know, the problem of the socialist character ofthe state-owned enterprises was approached in an undialecti-cal way, in the form of questions and answers, along the linesof “either this or that,” and not of “this and also its opposite.” 75

Yet the problem lay precisely in the fact that, under condi-tions of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the state-ownedenterprises could be both socialist enterprises (because of theleading role that the working class could play in them) andstate-capitalist enterprises, in so far as the specific form ofworking-class rule is not a state form, and in so far as thebourgeoisie had not disappeared but only changed its form ofexistence. The bourgeoisie was also present in the state-owned enterprises because of the reproduction in them of thecapitalist division of labor and the distribution relations corre-sponding thereto, and so, likewise, of “bourgeois right.” 76

Actually, the identification, purely and simply, of state own-ership with social appropriation, and the failure to distinguish between form of ownership and production relations, pre-vented the making of analyses that were essential if a clear-eyed struggle was to be waged against the development of anew bourgeoisie within the enterprises and in the machineryof the State and the Party. This bourgeoisie was one of a newtype, in that it did not possess juridical private property—acircumstance, which did not hinder it, however, from dispos-


ing, de facto, of the means of production.77 And it is facts thatcount, not juridical categories.

(e) The contradictory forms of existence ofcommodity relations and the illusory“treatment” of the contradictionsconnected with these forms

During the struggle waged by the Bolshevik Party from1926–1927 on in order to subject the development of theproductive forces to an overall plan, a conception becamestrengthened which tended to counterpose the “plan” to themarket in an undialectical way.

The consolidation in the Party’s thinking of this ideologicalpair of terms, “plan” and “market,” contributed to an increasein the internal contradictions of the Bolshevik ideologicalformation and blunted the capacity to analyze the real contra-dictions.

To grasp the nature of the problems involved here, we needto begin by reminding ourselves what the system of relationswas that was formed between enterprises during the NEPperiod, and which was to be reproduced later in a new form.Basically, these were commodity relations, and that was trueas well of the relations between the enterprises and theirworkers. The first set of relations took the form of price and thesecond the form of wages. These forms were engendered bythe contradiction between the private and independentcharacter (“working for oneself”) of the work performed andthe social character of production.

However, as a result of the development of Gosplan’s activ-ity and the framing of the economic plans, commodity rel-ations assumed two contradictory forms. On the one hand, aform with prices and wages which seemed to proceed from the“free” functioning of the “market” and the forces which comeinto conflict therein; on the other, a form corresponding to thefixing “by the plan” of prices, wages, and (in principle) quan-tities of goods to be produced.


In so far as commodity relations survived, with the condi-tions ensuring their reproduction, these were two forms of-existence of commodity relations. One of these forms implied-that the economic basis was operating in comparative inde-pendence; the other, that the operation of the economic basiswas subjected, more or less completely and really, to politicalimperatives. These were two forms of motion developing onthe basis of one and the same contradiction—that which wasexpressed in the existence of prices and wages. One of theseforms tended to “resolve” the contradiction a posteriori (expost), the other to “resolve” it a priori (ex ante). These forms ofmotion, based upon the same contradiction, were therefore,although contradictory, not mutually exclusive. What tendedto separate them was that the first form ensured its own repro-duction whereas the second could help to prepare (given- conditions going beyond “planning” and involving transfor-mation of the production processes themselves) its own dis-appearance, by helping to make production a directly politi-cal activity: direct production for society, which implies aplan that is no longer based upon commodity relations butresults from cooperation between the producers on the scaleof society.78

Correct treatment of the contradictory unity of two forms ofcommodity relations requires that the existence of this unityand of these contradictions be acknowledged, and, con-sequently, that the “plan” (in the conditions in which it isformulated and put into effect) not represented formally as acategory “external” to commodity relations, as the realizationof “the essence of organization.”

In the conditions of the fierce struggle that was waged fromthe end of the 1920s on to ensure “domination by the plan,”however, an ideological slippage took place which tended topresent this “domination,” even when prices and wages stillexisted, as equivalent to the “abolition” of commodity rela-tions. This ideological slippage was also connected with thestrengthening of the state bourgeoisie in process of formation(constituted within the apparatuses of the State and the Party)through practices which gave priority to accumulation over


the initiatives of the direct producers, to dead labor overliving labor. This ideological slippage was conditionedtheoretically by inhibition of the primacy of contradiction overunity.79

The idea of economic planning as “abolition” of commodityrelations “obliterates” one of the essential conclusions to bedrawn from Marx’s analyses, namely, that commodity andmoney relations can disappear only as the result of a longstruggle culminating in an overturn of production relations,political relations, and ideological relations, and “the appro-priation [by man] of his own general productive power.” 80

This “obliteration” implies that the contradictory unity ofthe two forms of existence of commodity relations is nowthought of as signifying opposition between two “objects,” the“plan” and the “market,” and that decisive significance isattributed to this opposition. By seeing the “contradictionbetween plan and market” in this way one loses sight of theprimary importance of class contradictions as well as of theconditions, objective and subjective, necessary for the disap-pearance of commodity and money relations and the de-velopment of production which is directly social, and there-fore dominated by politics.

The ideological forms which developed under these condi-tions tended to identify the struggle between the capitalistroad and the socialist road with the struggle between the“anarchy” of the market and “harmonious development” en-sured by planning. These ideological elements are seenexplicitly at work in the writings of Preobrazhensky, whocontrasted “the law of value” (associated with “privateeconomy”) and “the socialist planning principle” (associatedwith the “state sector” of the Soviet economy).81

According to this economist, the extension of planning isbound up with the struggle “to increase the means of produc-tion belonging to the proletarian state,” so that, under theconditions of the NEP, when a non-state economy existed, itwas necessary to struggle “for the maximum primitive socialistaccumulation.”82

Thus, instead of the real problem of the struggle between


the capitalist road and the socialist road, we find formulated,undialectically, the contrast between the law of value and the“planning principle,” between private economy and stateeconomy. The extension of the latter is somehow expectedautomatically to inhibit commodity, money, and capitalistrelations, and engender an entirely new reality, analysis ofwhich is no longer to be a matter for political economy (or forhistorical materialism), but for “a different science which isitself transitional between political economy and socialtechnology,”83 one which replaces analysis and treatment ofcontradictions with handling of problems of “organization.”

The ideas expressed by Preobrazhensky were formally re-jected by the Bolshevik Party, but, in fact, the conceptionemployed in The New Economics influenced the Party to anincreasing extent. There developed toward the end of the1920s an ideology which regarded the plan as a “form oforganization” that was capable by itself of “transcending”social contradictions. This ideology helped to “subordinate”the treatment of class contradictions to the “fulfillment” of theobjectives of economic plans, and brought in its train someprofoundly negative social and economic consequences,especially in strengthening the influence of the “technicians,”“organizers,” and “planners.

In an apparently paradoxical way, the myth of a plan capableof “transcending” social contradictions helped to strengthenthe monetary and financial illusions which had already de-veloped at the beginning of the NEP.84 An ideological ele-ment thus took shape which was utterly alien to Marxism,even in its most superficial forms.

The strengthening of monetary and financial illusions wasmanifested vigorously in 1927–1928. It led to the idea that theproblems of industrialization would be “solved” as soon as thefinancial resources needed for industrialization had been ob-tained. This “monetary illusion” caused the higher politicalauthorities to fail to reckon with the indications provided bythe forecasts of material balances—to regard it as unimportantthat these forecasts revealed the prospect of a series of short-ages and bottlenecks making materially impracticable some


of the projects which it was possible to “finance.” From thespring of 1927, under pressure from increasingly acute con-tradictions and the “state-of-emergency” atmosphere whichwas developing, the monetary illusion became more and moredominant: money now being formally “subordinated” to the“plan,” the power to “deal with contradictions” which wasattributed to the latter seemed to reinforce the illusory“power” of money. Hence the surprising result that, throughthe combination of planning with money, exchange valuecame to predominate over use value. In this way a componentof the Bolshevik ideological formation appeared which en-couraged the Party leaders to set targets that were materiallyunrealizable. Part of the planning apparatus, more directly atgrips with the material problems involved, tried to oppose thistendency—but less and less vigorously, because such opposi-tion was soon labeled “anti-Soviet activity.”

In 1930 the role of the monetary illusion was such that theGosplan journal published an article in which this appeared:“The planning of investments is based on costs expressed inmoney terms. The elements of material and technological concretisation are almost entirely absent. The plan presentsexclusively the money credits assigned for building andequipment: as for what equipment will be needed, and whensuch-and-such machinery will be required, that will becomeclear only in the course of the execution of the plan.”85

Closely linked with the ideological factor mentioned wasthe slogan which appeared at that time: “tempos decide every-thing.” According to this formula, the higher the growth rates,the better the situation. This slogan complemented the mone-tary illusion. It expressed the ruling preoccupation with“quantity”: quantitative growth was more important than thechanging of social relations, and the latter was appreciatedessentially for the “quantitative” effects which were expectedto follow from it.86

In reality, the stress upon “quantity” is also, in anotherform, a feature of the “technicist” ideology. That theseideological forms could play so important a role in the systemof ideas and in the practice of the Bolshevism of the late 1920s


testifies to the depth of the political and ideological crisisresulting from the breakdown of the worker-peasant alliancewhich was beginning to happen at that time. This crisis in-cited to a “flight forward,” bound up with the illusion that,thanks to technology, organization, planning, and money“subordinated” to planning, a whole series of objectiveswould become attainable.

And so the internal contradictions of the Bolshevik ideolog-ical formation were deepened, and positions werestrengthened that were in conflict with revolutionaryMarxism—with the Marxism-Leninism which was the theoret-ical basis of Bolshevism.

At the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, theexistence of the contradictions in the Bolshevik ideologicalformation which have been discussed above contributed tothe strengthening of other ideological and political elementsthat were also alien to revolutionary Marxism. These were theideological and political effects of the contradictions men-tioned, and it is these that we must now examine.

II. The ideological and political effects ofthe development of the internalcontradictions of the Bolshevikideological formation

What is covered by the expression “ideological and politicaleffects” must be explained through two preliminary observa-tions:

(1) I here call “ideological effects” a certain number ofchanges in the Bolshevik ideological formation which wereconnected with the previous ones, in that they were “neces-sary” in order to maintain a certain coherence among theincreasingly dominant ideological forms and between theseand the Party’s practices. These effects concerned mainly thestatus and structure of dialectical materialism.

(2) I here call “political effects” the consequences entailed,


on the political plane, by the growing role which the changesalready examined assigned to certain ideological notions suchas that of the Party’s “monolithic” character. More broadlythis expression refers to the political role of the Bolshevikideological formation in its changed form.

Essentially, the changes in the Bolshevik ideological forma-tion tended to inhibit some of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, to reduce Bolshevism’s ability to use revolutionaryMarxism as an instrument for analyzing reality. Under theseconditions, the Bolshevik ideological formation in its changedform served, with ever greater frequency, to “justify” afterthe act the adoption of political lines which were no longerbased on a rigorous concrete analysis of reality. It thenfunctioned as a “system of legitimation,” as a grid of ideologi-cal notions which one “applied” to reality, and not as a set ofconcepts to be used in a living analysis. This was one of theconsequences of the appearance in the Soviet Union of a“simplified” or “congealed” form of Marxism,87 which de-parted from revolutionary Marxism.

In the last analysis, of course, the changes in the Bolshevikideological formation and its role resulted from objective con-tradictions, and from class contradictions first and foremost. Intheir turn, however, through not having been subjected tocritical analysis, these changes reacted upon the Soviet socialformation by impoverishing the Marxism upon which the Bol-shevik Party relied, and favoring both a mechanistic view ofreality and interventions which had effects other than thosethe Party expected—effects of major political importance.

We must stress here an essential point, namely, that these“political effects” did not apply only in the USSR, but alsotended to operate on the international plane: for the Bol-shevik ideological formation, with the changes that it under-went, was the ideological form through which the Cominternand its various sections defined, as a rule, their political line.The changes in the Bolshevik ideological formation neverthe-less played such a role internationally only in so far as theycorresponded, at bottom, to the types of relations which theComintern’s sections maintained with the realities of their


own countries, and to the practices to which these sectionwere committed. The best proof (a contrario) of this is offeredby the fact that the changes in the Bolshevik ideological for-mation and in the ideology of the Comintern failed to producethe same effects (development of sectarianism and of ouv-riériste and ultraleft attitudes) in the Chinese CommunistParty (which was linked increasingly with the peasantry andengaged in revolutionary war) as it did in the CommunistParties of Europe and America. That became quite clear after1935, when the Chinese Communists developed their revolu-tionary line on a broad front, under the leadership of MaoTse-tung.

(a) Organic totality, interdependence, andcontradictions

Among the various changes in the Bolshevik ideologicalformation which ensured a certain degree of coherence amongthe ideological notions which tended to become dominantfrom the late 1920s, the most important was the affirmation of aprinciple of totality. This was, indeed, the first principleaffirmed by Stalin in his exposition of “the Marxist dialecticalmethod.” 88

According to this principle, dialectics regards nature as “aconnected and integral whole, in which things, phenomena,are organically connected with, dependent on and determinedby each other.” 89

“Nature” is thus presented as an organic totality in whichcoherence and unity take precedence over contradiction. Thisbeing so, one cannot understand any of the changes under-gone by the objects and phenomena which make up nature ifthese changes are “isolated from surrounding phenomena.”

Correlatively with the idea of an organic totality there isthus affirmed an interdependence of phenomena, presentedthrough the concept of an environment which is supposed tocondition every phenomenon.90 External causes of changetake precedence of internal causes. When, only at the end ofhis exposition of the “principal features” of Marxist dialectics,


Stalin says that “internal contradictions are inherent in allthings and phenomena of nature,” and that the conflict ofopposites “constitutes the internal content of the process ofdevelopment,” 91 this appears as a mere supplement to a bodyof principles already set forth, and is not articulated withthem. It serves as a mode of “observation” and not as a princi-ple of explanation.

The fundamental question of the unity of opposites is thusnot raised, so that the propositions put forward in Stalin’sessay are remote from those which Lenin formulates in hisPhilosophical Notebooks, especially when he says: “In brief,dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of oppo-sites.” 92

The political consequences of the conception of dialecticalmaterialism expressed by Stalin are all the more importantbecause, after describing “the Marxist dialectical method” inrelation to “nature” in the way we have seen, he proceeds to“the extension of the principles of dialectical method to thestudy of social life.” 93 The ways in which this extension iseffected are not very explicit, but Stalin’s formulations, includ-ing those devoted to historical materialism, show that “soci-ety,” too, is to be seen as an organic whole, the developmentof which is due to external causes operating as an environ-ment.

The “development of society” thus appears to dependmainly upon the changing of its relations with nature, theserelations consisting above all in the productive forces, so thatthe development of the latter is seen as the driving force ofsocial changes.94

(1) The fight for socialism and the fight forcontradictions

The notion of organic totality presumes that unity takesprecedence over contradiction. The more this notion becamedominant in Bolshevik writings of the late 1920s and the early1930s, the more “society” appeared to be an “organization” ora “system,” so that the Party’s interventions in the social


process tended to be thought of not in terms of dealing withcontradictions but in terms of “measures of organization andplanning” of the social process. Hence the slogan of the 1930s:“Organization decides everything.” Along with this there ap-peared many formulations resembling those of Bogdanov 95

(whose theses were nevertheless formally condemned). Butthis “convergence” must not lead us to an idealist interpreta-tion which would one-sidedly stress the Bogdanovist “origin”of these formulations.

To be sure, the influence of Bogdanov’s ideas upon manyBolsheviks is undeniable, and it is not hard to find formulasdirectly borrowed (perhaps “unconsciously”) from Bogdanov.Thus, in his Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Stalinused a typically Bogdanovist expression when he speaks of the“organising . . . value of new ideas.” 96

What is essential, however, is the set of social conditionswhich caused ideas resembling Bogdanov’s to acquire evergreater importance from the late 1920s on. These conditionswere due to a certain situation in the class struggle whichaccorded decisive weight to the State as the apparent “or-ganizer” of social changes.97

(2) The dominance of unity overcontradiction

The thesis of the dominance of unity over contradiction(inherent in the idea of “society” functioning as a “totality”whose transformations are determined by changes in its rela-tions with the “environment”) holds a central position inthe altered conception of “dialectical materialism” whichemerged (implicitly or explicitly) after the late 1920s. Thisthesis of the primacy of unity over contradiction tended to playa decisive ideological role in so far as it was “extended” or“applied” to whatever might be considered as constituting“an object.” It thus tended to inhibit Lenin’s thesis that “thesplitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradic-tory parts . . . is the essence (one of the ‘essentials,’ one of theprincipal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) ofdialectics.” 98


The thesis of the primacy of unity over contradiction is“rightist-leftist” in character. Depending on the conjunctureof the class struggle, it functions either as a “conciliatory”thesis providing a “basis” for renunciation of struggle, espe-cially inside the Party (in the name of unity at any price), or, aswas the case at the end of the 1920s, as a thesis providing a“basis” for sectarianism, for “ruthless struggle” (in the nameof a unity which seems preservable only by excluding allcontradiction). The first type of effect is rightist, while thesecond looks as though it is “left,” by virtue of the “rigorous-ness” of its consequences: it implies negation of the diversityof contradictions, and of their universality.

In the situation of extreme tension which existed at the endof the NEP period and at the beginning of the 1930s, the thesisof the primacy of unity over contradiction was accepted by themajority of the revolutionary elements in the Party and theworking class, and it developed “ultraleft” effects.

A few concrete examples will serve to show what these effectswere in the conjuncture of the period.

The most immediate effect (which was one of “legitima-tion”) concerned the conditions in which the Party worked: it,corresponded to the assertion of the political thesis of thenecessarily monolithic character of the Party.

The theme of the “monolithic” character of the BolshevikParty was actually tackled in a systematic way at the end of1928. It played a key role in Stalin’s speech of November19.99 In this speech he correctly pointed out the difference ofprinciple separating the Bolshevik Party from the SocialDemocratic parties (in their class basis, in their ideology, andin the organizational forms resulting from these). However,when speaking about the way the Party worked, he “summedup” this difference not by referring to the role of democraticcentralism but by mentioning the necessarily “monolithic”character of the Party.100 But the idea of a “monolithic” partynot only conflicts with the experience of Marxism-Leninism, itis illusory. The Party is inevitably traversed by contradictionsespecially by those forced upon it by its role as the instrumentthrough which the proletariat is able to unite the broad massesunder its leadership, so that, in one way or another, the


interests of the different strata making up these masses pro-duce an effect within the Party. Divergent points of viewnecessarily appear when these contradictory interests have tobe evaluated, and the problem is how to arrive correctly at anagreement between views reflecting the differing aspirationsof masses whose support is needed if the revolution is tocontinue to progress. This was why Lenin wrote, in his Letterto the Congress: “Our Party relies on two classes and there-fore its instability would be possible and its downfall inevita-ble if there were no agreement between these two classes.” 101

If the “monolithic principle” is carried to its logical conclu-sion, the Party deprives itself of the means of uniting the broadmasses, because it is led to reject, in practice, the principle ofdemocratic centralism. This latter principle presupposes, in-deed, that different ideas can be centralized after being exam-ined and critically discussed. Genuine application of thisprinciple demands recognition of the need to ensure the con-tradictory unity of centralization and democracy, and of thefact that the first term can possess meaning only under thedomination of the second. “Monolithism” rejects this princi-ple in the name of a formal “unity” which is to be secured, inan always illusory way, by means of ruthless struggle. Thisstruggle to obtain “perfect” unity tends to weaken the dic-tatorship of the proletariat, isolate the working class from therest of the masses, intensify administrative coercion of themasses, and develop the machinery of repression.

In the short term, one-sided stress on unity and centralism atthe expense of democracy may make it possible to win quicksuccesses, especially in the field of industry and technology.In the long term, it produces effects which are harmful to theworking class, and even to the leading role of the Party. Thestrengthening of the machinery of repression tends to developits independence of the Party, and to increase its interferencein Party life, especially in connection with purges. Eventually,therefore, the fight for “monolithism” becomes a weapon inthe class struggle, a weapon which, after it has made it possi-ble “to solve rapidly” a certain number of problems, servesthe bourgeois forces in society, because it hinders consolida-


tion of the Party’s leading role and its strengthening throughclear, ideological, struggle.

While the thesis of the primacy of unity over contradictionserves to “legitimize” a “monolithic” conception of the Party,it is obviously not what “produces” this conception. The latterdevelops on the basis of objective conditions: it is essentially aconsequence of the development of class struggles which theParty is unable to direct, and which it can affect only bystrengthening its unity through coercion.

This was shown by the changes which were introduced intothe way the Bolshevik Party worked after the Kronstadt rebel-lion, the strikes at the beginning of 1921, and the peasantrevolts of the winter of 1920–1921, in a period when Leninsaid of the peasantry that “their dissatisfaction with the pro-letarian dictatorship is mounting.” 102 In a period such as thatwas, Lenin considered that the rules which had governed theParty’s functioning until then should be modified, and opposi-tional activity within the Party reduced.103 It was then thatmeasures were adopted which restricted this activity. Never-theless, opposition was not forbidden but regulated, andmeans of expression were provided for those who disagreedwith the majority.104 There was then no question of any“monolithic” conception of the Party. However, the measurestaken in the particularly difficult situation at the beginning of1921 could serve as the starting point for practices aiming at“monolithism.”

Actually, all through the NEP period, opportunities to ex-press divergent views within the Party were being restrictedmore and more, so that gradually they ceased to have anythingin common with what had once been normal practice. Theimmediate reason for this change in political relations was theParty’s weakness in the rural areas. This was seen as the signof a still dangerous situation which gave reason for seriouslylimiting the scope for discussion in the. Party. This situationtended to obscure the idea that it could be right to swimagainst the stream. It often caused oppositionists themselvesto renounce the expression of their views, and even to say thatthey could not be in the right “against the Party.” In this way a


certain practice became established, of which Trotsky gave anexample when, while not repudiating his views, he neverthe-less declared, before the Thirteenth Congress (in 1924):“Comrades, none of us wishes to be right, or can be right,against his Party . . . I know that one cannot be right againstthe Party. One can be right only with the Party and throughthe Party.” 105 Although discussions did still take place duringthe NEP period, none of them was carried through to the end:disciplinary measures were taken before the theoretical rootsof the divergences had been revealed and the Party as a wholehad given its judgment on the substance of the problemsinvolved. The main reason for this was not—at the beginning,at least—the “disciplinary” measures applied to op-positionists, or the repression to which they were subjected.What was dominant, and explains why the discussions werenot carried through to the end, or were conducted in languagecomprehensible only to a few, was the concern common to allsides to affirm the unity of the Party, a concern dictated above allby the Party’s difficult position in the countryside, and fearlest this should threaten the Soviet power.

The result was that the unity which was achieved remainedformal. It was not based on an ideological struggle whichcould have made for a unity that was profoundly real, andconsequently the same debates kept on starting up again. Theconception of unity which was formed in this way assumedacceptance, implicitly at least, of the primacy of unity overcontradiction. This was the terrain on which arose the thesis of“monolithism,” an idealist thesis which denied the univer-sality of contradictions and the need for living unity in theParty.

The principle of “monolithism” was asserted when the situ-ation became especially dangerous, owing to the peasants’resistance to the emergency measures. During the years ofextreme tension connected with the collectivization of agricul-ture “from above,” this principle became a dogma, for thetension caused the Party to unite its forces as much as possi-ble, not on the basis of broad discussion but in the form ofobedience or constraint.106


(3) The tendency to identify the Party withthe State and with the proletariat

The specific conditions under which the Soviet revolutiondeveloped caused a tendency to appear very soon which, inimagination, identified the Bolshevik Party with the pro-letariat. These conditions were, especially, those which Lenindescribed when he said in 1919 that the soviets, instead ofbeing “organs of government by the working people, are infact organs of government for the working people by the ad-vanced section of the proletariat. . . .” 107

This phrase of Lenin’s reflected a real state of affairs. Hewas to refer to it again and again, until his very last writings,and to appeal for the situation to be changed. This appeal wasstill finding echoes in the NEP years, with the efforts thatwere made to “revitalize” the soviets.108

Lenin’s words clearly acknowledge that there was a differ-ence between “the advanced section of the proletariat” andthe working people as a whole. He did not identify the onewith the other, even while claiming that the Party was theinstrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Many of Le-nin’s writings emphasize that this instrument cannot beidentified with the proletariat, and that contradictions maydevelop between them, contradictions which only the prac-tice of a mass line can prevent from deepening.

While the concrete problems raised by the relations be-tween the Party and the class were not “solved” by the formu-lations of the years 1919–1922, their existence was, neverthe-less, admitted, and some elements of solution (though neces-sarily still only provisional) were put forward. In 1923 and thefollowing years these problems continued to be debated, butthe terms in which these debates were conducted did notusually help to clarify them. Indeed, the tendency to “iden-tify” the Party with the proletariat grew stronger and stronger.Thus, the Twelfth Party Congress adopted a resolution declar-ing that “the dictatorship of the working class cannot be as-sured otherwise than in the form of dictatorship of its leadingvanguard, i.e., the Communist Party.” 109


This identification implied that recognition of the role andplace of contradiction was replaced by the thesis of anabstractly presented unity, denying the existence of differ-ences and contradictions.

It is significant that one of the most systematic defenders ofthis conception was Zinoviev, who, as we know, waveredbetween openly rightist positions and “ultraleft” ones. One ofthe passages in which the identity between the State, theworking people, and the Party was asserted most formally byZinoviev reads as follows: “The State is the workers, theadvanced section of the workers, the vanguard. We are theState!110

In 1924 Zinoviev gave formal expression to the same themewhen he wrote:

The consensus of opinion about the dictatorship of the proletariatcan be expressed in the following propositions. It is the dictator-ship of a class if we look at the matter from the social and classpoint of view. It is the dictatorship of the Soviet state, a Sovietdictatorship, if we look at the matter from the point of view ofjuridical form, i.e., from the specifically state point of view. It isthe dictatorship of a party if we look at the same question fromthe point of view of leadership, from the point of view of theinternal mechanism of the whole vast machine of a transitionalsociety.111

This formulation implies identification of the dictatorship ofthe proletariat with the dictatorship of the Soviet state and thedictatorship of the Party. It obliterates, in illusory fashion, theproblems which arise from contradictions between class andParty, between class and state, and between state and Party.Such an identification can be conceived only if one’s theoreti-cal premise is the primacy of unity, and even of identity, overcontradiction.

In a number of his writings of 1924 Stalin opposed thisidentification and reaffirmed the thesis that the Party was the“instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” At thattime, however, the conditions necessary if the Party was toremain that “instrument” were not actually stated.112

At the beginning of 1926, in Problems of Leninism, Stalin


returned to this question, again refusing to identify the Partywith the proletariat:

Although the Party carries out the dictatorship of the proletariat,and in this sense the dictatorship of the proletariat is in essencethe “dictatorship” of its Party, this does not mean that the “dic-tatorship of the Party” (its leading role) is identical with thedictatorship of the proletariat, that the former is equal in scope tothe latter. . . . Whoever identifies the leading role of the Partywith the dictatorship of the proletariat substitutes “dictatorship”of the Party for the dictatorship of the proletariat.113

Stalin went on to admit, explicitly, that contradictions coulddevelop between the Party and the working class if certainconditions were not fulfilled.114

When, however, at the end of the NEP period, contradic-tions became acute between the Party and the various sectionsof the people, including the working class, these contradic-tions were not frankly analyzed, but passed over in silence.

This silence implicitly accepted the thesis which had beenexplicitly rejected, identifying the Party with the proletariat.This implicit identification gradually became dominant, pro-viding a theoretical “basis” for the practice of “revolutionfrom above.”

The process of identifying, in imagination, the State withthe Party and both with the proletariat (and later the Partywith the whole people), by continuing to develop, in objectiveconditions which aggravated the contradictions between theParty and the masses, led increasingly to the idea that anyopposition to the Party line (and even any criticism of the line)must be due to the activity of “enemies of the people.”

Given these conditions, asserting the primacy of unity anddenying the universality of contradiction resulted increasinglyin denial also of the existence of contradictions among thepeople. Thereafter, all opposition seemed to originate in ex-ternal contradictions, connected with the imperialist envi-ronment. Any divergence of view was opposition, and anyopposition was the act of a foreign agent. Such conceptionswere the product of objective contradictions the existence of


which was denied, they were determined by practices whichplaced the Party above the masses, but the thesis of the pri-macy of unity over contradiction (presented as a “Marxist”thesis) was the theoretical condition thanks to which the so-cial practices in question could be thought of as arising fromthe needs of a proletarian policy.

(4) The tendency to identify the Party withMarxist theory

The thesis of the primacy of unity over contradiction was thecondition making it possible to twist Lenin’s thesis on therevolutionary proletarian Party, to change the thesis of theunion (always contradictory) between Marxist theory and theParty115 into a thesis of the unity (without contradictions) ofthese two. This change tended to come about as soon as theprinciple was accepted that the Party was necessarily “alwaysright,” 116 thereby withdrawing the Party from criticism by themasses—and the Party leadership from criticism by the rankand file. When this happened, as it did in the USSR in the late1920s, the Party alone had the right to state what was or wasnot “theoretically correct,” and, in order to eliminate any riskof “divergent interpretations,” to concentrate “authority inmatters of theory” in the Party leadership. This concentrationreduced the possibility of genuine development of Marxism,even if the Party leadership was defending a revolutionaryline, for this development calls for broad ideological classstruggle and the opportunity for different analyses to be de-bated.117 The tendency to equate the Party with Marxisttheory (of which it is seen as the embodiment) leads, if per-sisted in, to the weakening of Marxism. The existence of sucha tendency in the USSR had objective bases, as we know,but it did not seem “acceptable” except on the basis of theprimacy of unity over contradiction.

At the same time, the identification of the Party with Marxisttheory caused the Party to be less and less alert to initiativesand ideas coming from the masses, though such alertness isessential if theory is to be enriched and mistakes put right. A


process thus began which caused the Party to act no longer asan educator itself in need of educating, but as an “authority”giving orders. The development of this form of action favoredthe use of repression against some sections of the people, so asto “bring” them to follow the Party’s directives, even whenthey were not ready to do this.

(5) The identification of theory with reality

The transformation of dialectical materialism by inhibitingthe primacy of contradiction over unity brought with it thepossibility of another ideological effect, namely, the iden-tification of theory with reality. The need for practice andscientific experiment tended consequently to be denied:theory was supposed to be capable, by itself, of “saying whatis.” When it functioned in this way, dialectical materialism inits changed form appeared to be a “science of the sciences,”capable of deciding what was “science” and what was not, andseeming even to offer the possibility of “deducing” scientificknowledge from its own principles. This was the function that“dialectical materialism” tended to fulfill in and after the1930s, when it served to “settle” scientific disputes—forexample, to “legitimise” Lysenko’s conceptions in the nameof abstract principles.118

The identification of theory with reality, if taken to its logi-cal conclusion, is equivalent to an idealist position: it elimi-nates the revolutionary implications of dialectical materialismand gives victory to a fundamentally conservative notion,namely: “All that is real is rational.” Dialectics tends to oper-ate no longer as an instrument for criticizing and changing“what is,” but as an instrument for legitimizing it.119 When weanalyze the way “dialectical materialism” functioned in theUSSR after the end of the 1920s, we see that a tendencypointing in this direction became more and more active. Theobjective basis for this tendency was the system of socialcontradictions which was developing at that time, and theplace that the Bolshevik Party occupied in that system throughthe practices in which it engaged, especially because of the


weakness of its relations with popular initiatives, starting withthose of the peasant masses.

(b) The tendency to reduce Marxism to aform of “evolutionism”

Toward the end of the 1920s an “evolutionist” interpreta-tion of Marx’s theory dominated the Bolshevik Party more andmore. To appreciate the change that this entailed in the Bol-shevik ideological formation we need to recall that Marx’stheory is something quite different from an enumeration ordescription of the “stages” through which every “society”necessarily has to pass.120

Marx categorically repudiated this interpretation, as whenhe replied, in 1877, to criticisms of his theory formulated bythe Russian writer N. Mikhailovsky.121 Speaking of this writer,Marx says:

For him it is absolutely necessary to change my sketch of theorigin of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophical theory of Universal Progress, fatally imposed on allpeoples, regardless of the historical circumstances in which theyfind themselves, ending finally in that economic system whichassures both the greatest amount of productive labour and thefullest development of man. But I must beg his pardon. This is todo me both too much honour and too much discredit. In variousplaces in Capital I have alluded to the destiny which overtookthe plebeians of ancient Rome. They were originally free peas-ants cultivating each on his own account his own parcel of land.In the course of Roman history they were expropriated. Thesame movement which separated them from their means of pro-duction and subsistence brought about not only the formation ofthe great landed estates but that of great holdings of moneycapital as well. Thus, one fine morning there were on the onehand free men deprived of everything except their labour powerand, on the other, to exploit this labour, the holders of all ac-quired wealth. What happened? The Roman proletarians be-came, not wage-earners, but an idle mob . . . and beside themthere developed a mode of production which was not capitalist


but based on slavery. Thus, events which were strikingly analo-gous, but which took place in different historical circumstances,led to entirely dissimilar results. By studying each of theseevolutions separately, and by comparing them afterwards, thekey to these phenomena can easily be found, but one will neversucceed with the “open sesame” of an historico-philosophicaltheory of which the supreme virtue consists in its being supra-historical.122

Marx here comes out categorically against any interpretationof his analyses which tends to make of them an “historico-philosophical theory” imposing on every people the necessityof passing through a determined succession of modes of pro-duction. In his correspondence with Vera Zasulich, Marx wasto condemn once more, in 1881, the idea of an “historicalfatalism” making every people pass through a succession ofthe same modes of production.123

Marx’s theory rules out any “general theory of the evolutionof human societies,” because it recognizes that social reality ischaracterized not by the existence at each moment of onesimple contradiction but, on the contrary, by a real multiplic-ity of contradictions.

The reduction of the movement of history to a succession ofsimple contradictions, necessarily engendering each other in apredetermined order, corresponds not to the movement ofmaterialist dialectics but to that of Hegelian dialectics.Though the latter does not rule out an apparent diversity ofcontradictions, it assumes that all the contradictions presentat one time in a “society” are merely the “expression” of onefundamental contradiction. Such a conception leads to theidea of “linear” and “irreversible” development.

The Marxist characterization of social formations by the ex-istence of a real multiplicity of contradictions implies, on thecontrary, that systems of specific contradictions may takeshape, which develop under particular conditions, and inwhich this or that element may, at any given moment, play adominant role.124 The real multiplicity of contradictions con-ditions the possibility of several paths of “development,” ofperiods of “stagnation” or “retreat,” the form and duration of


which depend on the way in which the class struggles con-cretely proceed, especially on the ideological plane.

At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning ofthe twentieth, under the impact of the reformist practices ofthe principal parties belonging to the Second International,the influence of idealism tended to obscure the radical differ-ence between Marx’s theory and any sort of “evolutionism.”Thereafter, all reforms were conceived as being “contribu-tions” to a fated “evolution.” The influence of the evolutionistideas of Darwinism and Positivism obviously helped, also, to“inhibit” the specific nature of Marx’s analyses, the impossi-bility of reducing them to any sort of evolutionism.

Marxism-Leninism eliminates everything which, by distort-ing Marx’s theory, may reduce it to an evolutionism. But atendency to carry out such a “reduction” made itself felt whenthe Bolshevik Party took the road of “revolution from above.”Some of Stalin’s formulations encapsulate the conceptions onthis point which gradually became dominant in the BolshevikParty. Examples are the formulation which refers to the idea ofa succession125 of modes of production, presented as“natural” (from which follows the idea of the need, always, for“steps forward”), and the formulation according to which aretreat to an earlier phase would be “senseless, stupid andunnatural.” 126

This idea makes of history a succession of linear advanceswhich take place irreversibly. It does not allow it to be seenthat struggle between the socialist road and the capitalistroad is inevitable. It tends to render inconceivable the possi-bility of a “restoration of capitalism,” or to allow this to beconceived only as a consequence of external aggression.Thereby, the capacity of the Party and the masses to combatthe danger of capitalist restoration due to internal social forcesis gravely compromised.

To the effects of the changes in the Bolshevik ideologicalformation which have just been discussed we must add thosewhich, while connected with those changes, resulted mainlyfrom the strengthening of the “ouvriériste” component in Bol-shevism.


(c) The development of the effects of theouvriériste component in the Bolshevikideological formation127

In the second half of the nineteenth century a line of demar-cation separated the proletarian positions of revolutionaryMarxism from the ouvriériste positions of other components ofthe organised labor movement. 128 Revolutionary Marxismgives primacy to the political role which the proletariat mustplay in order to bring about change in the relations of produc-tion. It shows that, if it is to play this role, the proletariat mustfulfill a function of leadership, and that it can do this becausethere are other classes which can be its allies in the socialistrevolution. Ouvriériste conceptions refuse to consider theprimacy of the political role of the working class. They treat assecondary the question of class alliances and emphasize one-sidedly the defense of the workers’ immediate interests—orelse they appear to assume that, in any case, the working class,by virtue of its place in production and its specific forms oforganization, stands “spontaneously” at the head of the revo-lutionary processes in countries where industry plays a suf-ficiently considerable role.

Ouvriérisme can take on many different forms. Its existenceis not necessarily obvious to members of the organizations ofthe working class who want to fight for socialism. From thispoint of view, the fight which Marx and Engels had to wageagainst the ouvriérisme of Lassalle and his supporters ishighly significant. A quick survey of this fight will enable us toappreciate better the nature of the contradictions which de-veloped within the Bolshevik ideological formation with spe-cial acuteness at the end of the 1920s.

A particularly explicit ouvriériste formulation is to be foundin the draft program which was produced to serve as the basis,in 1875, for the formation of a socialist workers’ party in Ger-many, and of which Marx wrote an important critique.129 Heattacked a paragraph in the draft which declared that “theemancipation of labour must be the work of the working class,relatively to which all other classes are only one reactionary


mass.” 130 To this formulation Marx counterposed that of theCommunist Manifesto, which, while describing the pro-letariat as being the only “really revolutionary class” confront-ing the bourgeoisie, recognizes the dual nature of the “middleclasses,” including the peasantry, who are both reactionary inso far as they depend upon the old modes of production andrevolutionary in view of their “impending transfer into theproletariat.” 131

Marx stresses the contrast between these two formulations.He shows that statements such as that which figures in theGotha Program, presenting the proletariat as the only revo-lutionary class, entail serious consequences. One of them isthe isolating of the working class, depriving it of allies, and sopreventing it from playing a leading role. Another is theorienting of the Party towards a policy which is concernedmainly with the immediate material advantages that the work-ing class can derive from its struggles, since it is assumed notto be concerned with relations of alliance with other classes.Under these conditions the predominant political line caneasily assume a statist character.132 Since the working classdoes not practice a policy of alliances, it has to impose theeffects of its policy on the other classes, and, for this purpose,to use state coercion—which actually implies an unavowed“alliance” with the agents of this coercion. Finally, the “stateframework” of the activity assigned to the working class, andthe material privileges which it is thus called upon to win foritself, serve as the basis for a nationalist orientation,133 break-ing with the internationalist demands which are inherent inany revolutionary proletarian struggle.

The existence of an ouvriériste component in the Bolshevikideological formation manifested itself concretely on morethan one occasion. One of its material bases was the quitespecial integration of the Party in the working class, whichwas a consequence of the particular magnitude assumed, inRussia at the beginning of the twentieth century, by strugglespeculiar to the working class. This ouvriériste component hadfor its theoretical condition the specific role often ascribed inthe Party to the technological forms of industrial production inthe formation of class consciousness.134


Historically, the ouvriériste component in the Bolshevikideological formation was more or less influential dependingon the conjuncture of the class struggle. It grew strong during“war communism,” when Bukharin, Trotsky, and others spokein a one-sided way of the working-class character of the Sovietstate, gave priority to production, and underestimated the re-quirements of the struggle needed in order to win the massesfor the aims of the revolution.135 It grew weaker at the begin-ning of the NEP period, when the necessity of strengtheningthe worker-peasant alliance became vital for the Soviet power(although for many Party members this was seen as only atemporary, tactical necessity, not a strategic necessity for thewhole period of transition to socialism). It grew strong againtoward the end of the NEP period, owing to the sharpening ofthe contradictions and to the illusion (engendered by thestrengthening of the state machine) that these contradictionscould be resolved by means of rapid accumulation realizedthrough state coercion: this accumulation, it was assumed,would strengthen the working class by increasing its numbers,and by changing the “mentality” of the peasantry and bringingabout total “unity” between them and the working class as aresult of their use of modern means of production whichwould put industry and agriculture on the same technologicalfoundation.

The principal political and ideological effects of thestrengthening of the ouvriériste component in the Bolshevikideological formation must now engage our attention.136 Ishall begin by examining its effects on policy regarding re-cruitment to the Party.

(1) Policy on recruitment to the Party

At the time of the Thirteenth Party Congress (May 1924)ouvriériste conceptions wielded a certain influence, in con-nection with the role played at that time by the Party’s organi-zations in the great industrial centers of Leningrad and Mos-cow, which were led by Zinoviev and Kamenev, respectively.That congress adopted a resolution which defined the aim of a50 percent working-class membership of the Party. (Molotov


even thought in terms of raising the working-class proportionto 90 percent.) The resolution required that the target of 50percent be reached within twelve months.137 It was no reached.

A temporary weakening of the ouvriériste component inBolshevism was shown at the Fourteenth Congress (De-cember 1925), being reflected in the adoption of a new line onrecruitment, which gave a bigger place to the peasants. How-ever, the ideological resistance of the middle cadres of theParty was such that recruitment of peasants remained, as wehave seen, very slight.

The ouvriériste component in the Bolshevik ideologicalformation was shown also in the fact that greater significancewas attributed to class origin than to class position. Con-sequently, there was a tendency to deny that poor and middlepeasants could take up, ideologically, revolutionary proletar-ian positions, whereas these were supposed to develop “spon-taneously” among workers employed in industry.

This mechanistic conception can be carried so far that ineffect it is transformed into its opposite. It leads easily to theview that industrial work leaves so deep an imprint that it isenough for a person to have been engaged in it for a certaintime for him to be “definitively” established in “proletarianpositions”—hence the importance attributed to “working-class origin,” as against actual occupation, that is, presentintegration in production relations.

Thus, ouvriériste conceptions tend to identify one’sideological class position with one’s original class situation.This identification was current among the supporters of Pro-letkult, and it became gradually accepted on a fairly widescale, even after Proletkult had ceased to exercise any realinfluence. It was clearly formulated in Pletnev’s article enti-tled “On the Ideological Front,” where he said that “scholars,artists, engineers, etc.,” who have emerged from the workingclass will produce a “proletarian class culture and noother”—a culture quite different from that produced by theircounterparts of bourgeois origin. As Lenin remarked, this was“utter fiction.” 138 Such a fiction confers upon cadres who are of


working-class origin—or who have merely spent some timeworking in industry—a working-class “essence” which is sup-posed to endow them with qualities they can never lose. It isin the personal interest of these cadres to support this fiction.What the latter actually does is to contribute to abandonmentof the struggle aimed at ending the separation between man-ual and mental work, and to underestimating the need for allcadres, even those “of working-class origin,” to take part inmanual work.139

(2) The role assigned to technology andform of “evolutionism”

In the Bolshevik ideological formation, ouvriériste concep-tions were often combined with a conception of social de-velopment which gave a front-rank role to “technologicalprogress,” and consequently to technicians.

During the first phase of the NEP (down to 1925) theideological elements which accorded this role to technologyand technicians were not specially influential. In that periodthe problem of technological change was not yet on theagenda: the essential task was to get the existing factoriesworking. Nevertheless, even then, these ideological elementsproduced certain political effects. This was the case with theorder of priority followed in the reactivation of the factorieswhich had ceased to function in 1920–1921. The dominanttendency was to try and get back into operation, first andforemost, the large-scale enterprises, the most up-to-date—which was not always politically correct. Lenin many timesdirected the Party’s attention to the role that should be playedby small-scale industry, especially rural industry, whichserved the peasants directly. The Party’s official decisionstook account of this principle, but, in practice, these decisionswere applied only reluctantly. The pressure of the managersand technicians of the large-scale enterprises tended to holdback their application, in the name of efficiency and of the“technological superiority” of large-scale industry.


Similarly, from the start of the NEP, there was the problemof the “scientific organization of work.” The way that thisproblem was approached shows clearly the influence of“technicist” elements in ideology. In order to appreciate howthis influence was exerted we must first recall the way inwhich questions of technology were dealt with after the end of1925.

At that time the period of “restoration” was regarded ashaving been completed: thereafter, the problem known as“reconstruction” was to be the order of the day. Discussionof this problem was concentrated chiefly on how much was tobe invested in industry, on the respective priorities of thevarious branches of industry and agriculture, and on the wayin which investment would be financed. The question of thetechnology to be used in the new factories was, however,hardly touched on. It was, in a sense, decided in advance, for itseemed “self-evident” that this technology must be the most“advanced,” the most “highly mechanized” possible, and thatthe model of the very large enterprise must be preferred to anyother. (In those days they spoke of “giant factories,” just as,later, they were to speak of “giant kolkhozes”). It was im-plicitly accepted that this technology and these factories weremost likely to “produce” a revolutionary proletariat devoted tothe cause of socialism. The presence of “ouvriériste-technicist” conceptions is all the more obvious here140 be-cause the implicit “choice” made considerably increased theamount of investment needed in order to obtain a certainvolume of production, and also necessitated massive imports.The Soviet Union was, in fact, not then in a position to pro-duce for itself all the “up-to-date” equipment which thisorientation made it necessary to acquire. This was to haveobvious effects on the policy followed in relation to the peas-antry, entailing, first, restriction of the supply of goods tothem, and then increased exactions from agriculture withoutany counterpart, so as to increase the exports needed in orderto pay for foreign equipment.

Other political and social effects also require our attention,namely, those which developed at the level of the production


process, and concerned the bigger place taken in social life bythe technicians, specialists, and “experts.” These effects fol-lowed from the special role which assertion of the primacy ofthe most “up-to-date” technology assigned to dead labor (em-bodied in machinery) and technical knowledge (historically“concentrated” in the engineers and technicians), to the dis-advantage of the living labor contributed by the immediateproducers, by the workers themselves.

We can now look back at the way in which, in the first yearsof the NEP, the problem of the “scientific organization ofwork” was taken up, and show the contradictions which de-veloped in this connection. It is significant that the personswho were, in the first place, responsible for this “organiza-tion” were former activists of Proletkult141 and that their ef-forts produced two apparently contradictory tendencies142

which, moreover, ended by merging under the direction ofthe technicians, at a conference of NOT held on March 10,1924.

This conference adopted the theses put before it byKuibyshev,143 condemning as anti-Marxist the identification ofNOT with “a complete system of the organisation of work” andemphasizing, together, mechanization, rationalization ofproduction, and intensification of labor. NOT became there-after more and more a matter for specialists—though this didnot, of course, prevent the holding of workers’ productionconferences, at which problems of increasing productivitywere also discussed. Those specialists took charge of the or-ganization of work and “improved” the wage system by de-veloping the system of payment of bonuses—but also of theimposition of penalties and fines. In this way the obvious“rightist” effects of the ouvriériste-technicist conceptionsemerged.

After 1926, power in the domain of the organization of laborwas practically taken away from the trade unions and concen-trated more and more in the hands of managements andspecialists. Emphasis was now laid much more on technologythan on liberating the initiative of the workers. A social andpolitical consequence of this line was that technicians and


experts were made privileged persons, both as regards re-muneration144 and as regards authority.145

(3) Distrust of, or disdain for the peasantry

What was characteristic of the NEP was the will to consoli-date the worker-peasant alliance, but this will was obstructedwhere many Party members were concerned by a profounddistrust of the peasantry. This distrust was due, in part, to thetension which developed between the Soviet power and thepeasants during “war communism.” Stalin warned Partymembers working in the rural areas against this when hestressed, in 1924, the need for Party members to show con-idence in the non-Party peasant and to treat him as anequal.146

But distrust of the peasantry had its roots also in the ouv-riériste conceptions which were present in the Bolshevikideological formation. This was not expressed only in an “ul-traleft” form. It even assumed, quite often, an openly “right-ist” form, implying disdain for the peasantry and a sort ofappeal for unity between workers and intellectuals against thepeasantry. There are some writings by Maxim Gorky whichexpress this tendency very clearly. They are worthy of particu-lar attention because Gorky, who at first showed reserve to-ward the October Revolution, later came to support the Sovietpower. In the early 1930s this writer enjoyed great prestigeamong most Party members, and especially among the lead-ers.

It is therefore to be recalled how Gorky thought of theRussian peasantry, and how he contrasted the peasant with the“townsman,” whom he described (regardless of the socialclass to which this person belonged) as alone capable of“progress” and “reason.” In a work entitled The RussianPeasant, which he wrote in 1922, Gorky said: “Thetownsman’s labour is varied, stable and enduring. . . . He hassubordinated the forces of nature to his high aims, and theyserve him like the jinns of the Eastern fables served KingSolomon. . . . He has created around him an atmosphere ofreason. . . .” 147


With this “townsman” Gorky contrasts the peasants, aboutwhom, he says “my thoughts weigh very heavily upon me.”148

In his eyes, it is generally true that “the people want to eat asmuch as possible and work as little as possible, they want tohave all rights and no obligations.” 149 He considers that thesecharacteristics are especially applicable to the Russian peas-ants, who, moreover, he says, are opposed to all progress:“The village greets with distrust and hostility those who at-tempt to introduce into its life something of themselves, some-thing new, and it rapidly expels them from its midst.” 150

In the pages that follow, expressions of disdain accumulate.For Gorky, the “psychology” of the Russian peasant is concen-trated in the saying: “Don’t run away from anything, but don’tdo anything.”151 He quotes a Russian historian who says, de-scribing the peasants: “’a multitude of superstitions and noideas.’ This sad judgment is confirmed by the whole of Rus-sian folklore.” 152 As he sees it, the Russian peasantry has nohistorical memory of its own revolts. It has forgotten thosewho led them—Bolotnikov, Stephan Razin, Pugachev: “All thisleft no trace either on the Russian peasant’s daily life or on hismemory.” 153

So far as the peasant masses are concerned, the Russianpeople seem to him incapable of change, and he adds: “I thinkthat a feeling of particular cruelty, cold-blooded . . . is exclu-sively peculiar to the Russian people.” 154

There is no point in going on: all the clichés of thebourgeoisie and landowners terrified of peasant revolts are tobe found in Gorky’s writings.

Subsequently, though he did not repeat such crude formula-tions, disdain and fear of the peasantry continued to be afeature of his thinking. And it was this same disdain and fearof the peasantry which influenced some Party members whopassed easily from an anti-kulak policy to a policy of repressionagainst the peasantry as a whole.

True, from 1928 on this “slippage” took place under pres-sure of the accumulated difficulties arising in relations be-tween the peasantry and the Soviet power, especially whenhe interests of the peasant masses were sacrificed to the aimof achieving the maximum tempo of industrialization. But


what made this slippage possible, that is to say, acceptable tothe majority of Party members, was the reactivation of ideolog-ical elements which led them to conclude that “civilization”had to be imposed on the peasants by means of a “revolutionfrom above” and the application of measures aimed at check-ing on the peasants’ activity by surrounding them with cadreswho, so far as possible, were of urban origin. In fact, even themachines which were supposed to be capable of changing thepeasants’ “mentality” were not entrusted to them, but wereconcentrated in “machine-and-tractor stations,” and operatedby technicians and workers, not by the collective farmersthemselves.

The ideological elements of distrust in relation to the peas-antry which were reactivated in 1928–1929, and which had adecisive influence at that time, were already at work, thoughin a minor key, during the first years of the NEP, andobstructed the creation of a genuine political alliance with thepeasants. They contributed to making the worker-peasant al-liance seem a mere tactical necessity, essentially temporary,and not a fundamental strategic necessity.

The interpretation of the NEP as a mere tactical necessity isto be found in many writings produced long before the “greatchange,” and even in Stalin’s writings, although, as we know,he called upon Party members at that time to show confidencein the peasants. Thus, in the speech he made at the ThirteenthConference of the Moscow Region, on January 27, 1925, hesaid: “The peasantry is the only ally that can be of directassistance to our revolution at this very moment. It is a ques-tion of direct assistance just now, at the present moment.”155

And he added, a little later:As you yourselves are aware, this ally is not a very staunch one;the peasantry is not as reliable an ally as the proletariat in thedeveloped capitalist countries. But, for all that, it is an ally. . . .That is why, particularly at the present moment, when thecourse of development of revolutionary and all other crises hasslowed down somewhat, the question of the peasantry acquiresexceptional importance.156

About a year later, on February 9, 1926, Stalin returned tothis question, in replying to three correspondents. In this


reply, he made explicit what he had implied in January 1925,so expressing political distrust toward the peasantry as awhole:

It seems to me that you are somewhat offended at my calling thepeasantry a not very firm ally, an ally not as reliable as theproletariat of the capitalistically developed countries. . . . MustI not tell the truth bluntly? Is it not true that, at the time of theKolchak and Denikin invasions, the peasantry quite often vacil-lated, siding now with the workers, now with the generals? Andwere there not plenty of peasant volunteers in Denikin’s andKolchak’s armies? 157

These formulations clearly show principled distrust towardthe peasantry, who were seen as an ally neither firm norreliable. They suggest the possibility of a split in the worker-peasant alliance, which might occur if a situation of interna-tional revolutionary crisis were to develop to a sufficient de-gree in the “capitalistically developed countries” (as the Bol-shevik Party and the Comintern expected in 1929), making“unnecessary” the political line of active alliance with thepeasant masses.

(4) The alliance between workers andintellectuals and the “rallying” of theold intelligentsia

The conception which ascribed a revolutionary role to theproletariat not because of the nature of the class contradictionsin which it is integrated but because of its connection with“modern technology,” with “town life” and, indirectly, with“science,” easily led to putting “on the same plane” the work-ing class and those who were seen as working “to developscience.” More generally, this conception helped to make theintellectuals appear as a political “vanguard.” In a minor form,this conception was present in the Bolshevik ideological for-mation. It appeared in a major form in some of Gorky’s writ-ings. Some extracts from these deserve to be quoted, as theyenable us to define an ideological trend which played a sig-nificant role in the Soviet Union.


In his essay on The Russian Peasant, Gorky did not shrinkfrom writing, in defiance of all historical truth, that “the wholeof the Russian intelligentsia . . . for almost a whole centuryhas manfully attempted to set on its feet the ponderous Rus-sian people, lying lazily, negligently and lucklessly on itssoil. . . .” 158

According to Gorky, the Russian intelligentsia carried out inthis way a task of decisive importance, starting to awaken“common sense” among the peasants. The political implica-tion of this conception of the historical role played by theintellectuals was clearly expressed by Gorky in a later work ofhis, written in 1924, when he said:

The fundamental obstacle on the path of Russia’s progress to-wards Europeanisation and culture is the fact of the overwhelm-ing predominance of the illiterate countryside over the town, thezoological individualism of the peasantry, and its almost com-plete lack of social feelings. The dictatorship of the politicallyliterate workers in close alliance with the intelligentsia was inmy view the only possible escape from a difficult situation, espe-cially complicated by the war which brought still further anarchyinto the countryside. . . . The Russian intelligentsia—the edu-cated people and the workers—was, is, and will long remain, theonly cart-horse that can be harnessed to the heavy load of Rus-sian history.159

Here Gorky opposed to Lenin’s conception of an alliancebetween the workers and the peasants a quite different con-ception, that of an alliance between the working class and theRussian intelligentsia.

The Bolshevik Party never formally accepted this view, but,in the contradictory whole which constituted the Bolshevikideological formation, ideas close to those formulated crudelyby Gorky were present and were manifested on the plane ofpractice.

One of the first expressions of this ideology is to be found ina resolution adopted by the Thirteenth Party Congress, in May1924, after Lenin’s death.160 The principal aspect of this reso-lution is its ouvriérisme. It calls, in a one-sided way, for mas-


sive recruitment to the Party from among the working class.161

On the other hand, it says practically nothing about the needto recruit members from among the poorest sections of thepeasantry.

However, there was another aspect to this resolution whichwas later to assume great importance because it correspondedto the new situation which a section of the intelligentsia wassoon to occupy in the Party. This second aspect appears in theparagraphs dealing with Party members of nonworker origin.The resolution says that they must be removed from the Party“if they have not shown themselves to be Communists byimproving the work of some organisation of the state, theeconomy etc., and have not had direct contact with the workerand peasant masses.”162

In this document, being a “Communist” has nothing to dowith taking up a class position, with adhesion to the principlesof Marxism-Leninism, or with a way of living and acting whichfollows from this position and these principles, since it ispossible to show oneself a “Communist” by improving thework of organizations of the State, the economy, etc. Thiscriterion opens the Party’s doors to intellectuals, adminis-trators, and specialists who carry out “correctly” their tasks inthe state machine, regardless of their class position andwhether or not they adhere to the revolutionary ideology ofthe proletariat. This was an “opening” toward the intelligen-sia which echoed Gorky’s preoccupations (without explicitlycoinciding with them).

The same Thirteenth Congress passed another resolution163

certain passages of which pointed the same way. This was theappeal which the Congress addressed “to the advanced ruralintelligentsia, and especially to the rural schoolteachers andthe agrarian specialists,” as the “vehicle in the countryside ofthe policy of the Party and the Soviet power.” 164 This appealwas issued not to the poor and middle peasants, but to asection of the intelligentsia, which, until then, had shownitself mainly anti-Communist.

Nine months after the Thirteenth Party Congress, in January1925, Zinoviev spoke at the first congress of schoolteachers


held under Soviet rule. After recalling the hostile attitudemaintained until shortly before this time by the school-teachers, Zinoviev said: “We can now say to the working classof our country that the schoolteachers and the working classhave understood each other and finally come to an agreement,that the teachers of the U.S.S.R. and the Communist Partyhave concluded an unbreakable alliance.” 165

These sentences did not describe reality, but they set forth aprogram which closely resembled Gorky’s thesis. This pro-gram set the aim of “winning” the peasants through theschoolteachers, who were called upon to be “the vanguard ofthe countryside”—which presupposed according to Zinoviev,that they did not become the “spokesmen” of the peasants(not, at any rate, of the peasants as “traders”).166

In the months that followed, various strata of the intelligent-sia “rallied” to the Soviet power. In March 1925, the VTsIK,meeting, by way of exception, at Tiflis, received a delegationof doctors who presented a declaration of loyalty. One of themembers of the VTsIK, Petrovsky, greeted this event as amanifestation of the alliance between “labour and science.”In May 1925 the Third Congress of Soviets received a delega-tion of university rectors, an event which was also seen as a“rallying” by a section of the intelligentsia. Finally, in Sep-tember 1925, when the two-hundredth anniversary of Russia’sAcademy of Sciences was celebrated, the “reconciliation” ofthe world of learning with the Soviet power was made thetheme of many articles and speeches, including a speech byZinoviev to the Academy itself.167

Actually, these “rallyings” did not mean in the least that theintelligentsia as a whole accepted the prospect of socialism.What was happening was, in the main, a rallying to an estab-lished political authority, the recognition of an accomplishedfact. That this fact was recognized was certainly a great victoryfor the Bolshevik Party, but it was of an ambiguous nature.Most of the members of the intelligentsia who “rallied” in thisway aimed either at ensuring their survival in material condi-tions which were on the upgrade, or at installing themselvesin the machinery of state. And, in so far as this installation took


place without the intelligentsia having been ideologicallytransformed, and without this machinery having been revo-lutionized, the overwhelming majority of the intellectualsfunctioned as agents of bourgeois practices, both on the planeof management of enterprises and on that of teaching, scien-tific and technological research, art, and literature.

The maintenance of these practices affected at the sametime the new intelligentsia, the new cadres of proletarianorigin, and thus constituted a factor, in the reproduction ofbourgeois social relations, the existence of which was one ofthe objective bases of a bourgeois path of development. Thelatter did not necessarily coincide with an extension of the“private” enterprises, but could fit in quite well with the riseof large-scale state-owned industry.

(5) The accelerated and one-sideddevelopment of large-scale industry,and Great-Russian chauvinism

From 1928-1929 the “maximum” (actually one-sided) de-velopment of large-scale state-owned industry, to be equippedwith the “most up-to-date” technology, created an objectivesituation that was still more favorable to penetration by manymembers of the old intelligentsia into the economic and ad-ministrative apparatuses of the Soviet state. True, this penetra-tion had its ups and downs, for the vigilance of the BolshevikParty regarding bourgeois intellectuals remained acute.Nevertheless, the decisive problem, that of ideological influ-ence of the old intelligentsia upon the “new Soviet intellectu-als,” could not be dealt with by vigilance alone.

What was needed here was a struggle to transform theideological apparatuses and against the separation betweenmental and manual work—and this struggle was not under-taken. It was all the less undertaken because the numericalgrowth of the new intelligentsia gave rise to the illusion thatthis stratum, being partly of working-class origin, did not runthe risk of falling under the influence of bourgeois ideology—


their class origin serving, somehow, to “safeguard” their classposition.

In fact, this was not so, and the new intelligentsia—integrated in apparatuses which reproduced the essentials ofthe social relations characteristic of the old university, scien-tific, technological, and even administrative apparatuses—waslargely dominated by the ideology of the old intelligentsia.One of the components of that ideology was Russiannationalism. It was this that determined many of the “rally-ings” which took place when the great industrial projects ofthe First Five-Year Plan were drawn up and put into effect.The emphasis placed on these projects and on the role of“vanguard technology” revived the bourgeois nationalism ofthe old intelligentsia. In their view, the priority realization ofthese projects was not destined to strengthen the dictatorshipof the proletariat but to turn Russia into a “modern greatpower,” a “Europeanised” country, as Gorky put it.

The bourgeois nationalism of the old intelligentsia whichrallied to the Soviet power at that time, and the influence itexercised upon Soviet scientists, researchers, and technicians,and, through them, upon many cadres, favored the reactivationof that “Great-Russian chauvinism” which was already pres-ent in the Bolshevik Party, as Lenin had pointed out in1922.168

Thus, the series of changes which took place after 1928 inthe Soviet social formation entailed very important changes inthe Bolshevik ideological formation. Some of the politicalconsequences of these changes made their appearance com-paratively soon. These were the ones I have mentioned.Others took some years to make themselves felt, and will haveto be analyzed later.

Notes

1. The problem of these contradictions was discussed in volume Iof this work, especially pp. 469–475.

2. Lenin, CW, vol. 4, pp. 211–212.


3. The presence of ideological notions in every science accountsfor the need for rectifications. It means that the pair of concepts,“science and ideology,” does not describe two contrasting poleswhich are mutually exclusive, but two opposites which inter-penetrate. A system of scientific knowledge is what it is insofaras the elements of science in it predominate over the elementsof ideology. The non-exclusive character of science and ideol-ogy explains why Lenin was able to speak of Marxism as “theideology of the revolutionary proletariat” (CW, vol. 31, p. 317),and why Marx could say that the proletarian ideology is thatwhich the proletariat has to recognize as correct because itcorresponds to the place occupied by the working class in theproduction relations.

4. A problem arises here: may not the process of the impoverish-ment and obscuring of the principles and ideas of revolutionaryMarxism, which can affect Marxism (as historically constitutedthrough its merging with the working-class movement) attainsuch a degree (in the case of a particular ideological and politi-cal trend) that what results has no longer anything but an illu-sory connection with revolutionary Marxism? Undeniably, thiscan happen. This process then engenders a “revisionism”which is merely a parody of Marxism. The appearance of a“revisionism” has as its corollary the appearance of a Marxismof the new epoch which joins battle with it. On this subject G.Madjarian makes an important observation: “The fight against‘revisionism’ cannot be waged by conserving, or, rather, bymerely reappropriating, Marxism as it existed historically in theprevious period. Far from being the signal for a return to thesupposed orthodoxy of the preceding epoch, the appearance of a‘revisionism’ is a symptom of the need for Marxism to criticizeitself ’ (“Marxisme, conception staliniene, révisionnisme,” inCommunisme, May–August 1976 , p. 44).

5. Said by Marx in the later 1870s, and quoted by Engels in hisletter of September 7, 1890, to Der Sozialdemokrat (Marx andEngels, Werke, vol. 22, p. 69).

6. Hence, for example, the critiques by Marx and Engels of the“Gotha” and “Erfurt” programs drawn up by the German labormovement.

7. This “overlooking” was sometimes conscious falsification.Thus, in the 1891 German edition of The Civil War in France,edited by Engels, the latter spoke plainly of “the Social-Democratic philistine,” but in the versions printed at the time


the word “Social-Democratic” was replaced by “German,” so asto hide from readers the divergences between Engels and theSocial Democratic Party. The manuscript of this work is in theInstitute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow: the “correction” isnot in Engels’ handwriting (Marx and Engels, On the ParisCommune, pp. 34 and 301, n. 18).

8. The divergences between Marx’s revolutionary theory and theMarxism of German Social Democracy were not usually “pro-claimed” by Marx and Engels, but nevertheless they did nothide them. They wrote of them not only in their critiques of theGotha and Erfurt programs but also on a number of other occa-sions. To make a survey of these divergences (which were not,as a rule, expressed explicitly), it is necessary to refer to severalwritings. Here I will mention only: Marx’s interview for theChicago Tribune, January 5, 1879, on “Social-Democracy, Bis-marck and the Anti-Socialist Law” (published in German inZeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, vol. XII, no. 1[1964]; in Russian in Voprosy Istorii K.P.S.S., no. 10[1966]; and in French in Marx and Engels, La Social-Démocratie allemande, Collection “10/18,” Paris, 1975, p. 97);Marx’s notes on Bakunin’s book Statism and Anarchy (Marxand Engels and Lenin on Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism,pp. 147–152); and some observations by Engels in his 1885article “On the History of the Communist League” (Marx andEngels, Selected Works in Three Volumes, vol. 2, pp. 173 ff.).

9. See volume I of the present work, especially pp. 20–32; 113 ff.;368 ff.; 497 ff.

10. One of these currents was, as we shall see, Bogdanovism, theideological system worked out by Bogdanov (see below, p. 570,n. 26). In modified forms, this current was constantly present inthe Bolshevik ideological formation.

11 In his foreword to D. Lecourt’s book Lyssenko, L. Althussermakes some important points on this subject (p. 13).

12. Marx, Capital, vol. I, pp. 173–174.13. See the resolution on the Five-Year Plan adopted in April 1929

by the Sixteenth Party Conference, in K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh,vol. 2, p. 453.

14. Stalin, Works, vol. 11, p. 167.15. As we have seen, this “condemnation” had been, however,

largely political and “organizational,” without the thoroughanalysis which would have enabled theoretical knowledge andrevolutionary Marxism to make progress. This was pointed out


by Mao Tse-tung when, speaking about the late 1920s and early1930s, he said that “at that time the Soviet Union had wonvictory over the Trotskyites, though on the theoretical planethey had only defeated the Deborin school” (Mao, talk onMarch 10, 1958, at the Chengtu Conference of the ChineseCommunist Party; in Stuart R. Schram, ed., Mao Tse-tung Unre-hearsed, p. 97 [my emphasis—C. B.]. The “Deborin school” wasa philosophical trend condemned by Stalin in 1930 for “Men-shevik idealism.”).

16 Some of these questions had arisen already in Lenin’s lifetime,as has been shown in volume I of the present work (e.g., pp. 419ff., 523 ff.).

17. I here discuss a theme already touched upon in volume I of thepresent work (pp. 23–29).

18. These are fundamental themes in the Manifesto of the Com-munist Party of Marx and Engels, developed in their princi-pal subsequent writings.

19. Marx, letter to Weydemeyer, March 5, 1852 (Selected Corre-spondence, p. 86); see also the writings assembled by E. Balibarin his book Sur la dictature du prolétariat, pp. 207 ff.

20. Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 21.21. It is true that not all the writings of Marx and Engels show with

the same rigor the connection between the processes of socialreproduction and of social transformation (e.g., certain formula-tions in the 1859 preface to the Contribution to the Critique ofPolitical Economy are not free from ambiguity). This is why weneed to consider the writings of Marx and Engels, and Marxismas it has existed historically, as a contradictory combination offormulations and analyses which are revolutionary (in their con-tent and in the conclusions that can be drawn from them) andothers which are less rigorous. The latter are, as a rule, provi-sional and transitional expressions of the thought of Marx andEngels, and of those who have sought to carry their analysesfurther, but they do not form part of revolutionary Marxism. Itwas historically inevitable that this should be so, and that thesecond category of formulations and analyses should have alsoplayed a part in Marxist writings after Marx’s time, especially inperiods when the development of the revolutionary movementof the masses was not itself helping to draw a line of demarca-tion between the different writings of Marx and Engels. I returnto this question later (above, p. 514).

22. Stalin, Leninism, pp. 591 ff. This essay was first published in


September 1938 as part of the History of the C.P.S.U.(B.):A Short Course.

23. Another interesting aspect of this work is that it was written notin the heat of polemic but after the main battles fought underthe theoretical banner of its theses were over, at a momentwhen it was not necessary to “overstress” certain formulationsin order to carry more conviction—at a moment, too, when a firstsumming-up of what had been done under the banner of thesetheses could be attempted.

24. Stalin, Leninism, pp. 591–660.25. Ibid., pp. 600 ff.26. Alexander Bogdanov was born in 1873. He belonged to the

Bolshevik wing of the RSDLP. At first close to Lenin, he drewaway from Bolshevism after the revolution of 1905. In 1907 heformed an ultraleft faction, which published the journal Vpered.He was at that time an Otzovist (on this point, see volume I ofthe present work, p. 117) and was criticized as such by Lenin.He then broke with Bolshevism. Already before 1907 Bogdanovhad published (between 1903 and 1906) a neo-Kantian bookwhich was wholly un-Marxist: Empiriomonism. Lenin attackedthe empiricist and idealist-fideist conceptions in this work in hisMaterialism and Empiriocriticism (1909).

The subsequent development of Bogdanov’s ideas was set outsynthetically in his book on “tectology,” which appeared in twovolumes in 1913 and 1917. It confirmed his break with Marxismand dialectics: to contradiction he counterposed “equilibrium”and “organisation.”

In 1917 Bogdanov returned to Russia, where he gave the firstimpulse to the Proletkult (“Proletarian Culture”) group: seebelow, note 29. In 1922–1923 he opened the New EconomicPolicy, leading the group called “Workers’ Truth.” He wasarrested, but released soon afterward. In 1924 some writings ofhis in which he expounded his economic and social ideas werepublished by the State Publishing House and the CommunistAcademy. Subsequently he devoted himself, as a doctor, toscientific research, and died in 1928.

27. Stalin, Leninism, p. 600.28. The absence, in such a work, of a critique of these “sociologi-

cal” ideas of Bogdanov’s is obviously not accidental (see below,pp. 572–574, n. 39).

29. Proletkult, a movement founded after the revolution of Feb-


ruary 1917, sought to represent “proletarian culture” and pro-mote its progress. It was led by persons close to Bogdanov. Afterthe October Revolution it acquired a certain importance, tend-ing to develop its own political line, based on Bogdanov’sideas—non-Marxist conceptions presented in Marxist “ter-minology.”

Proletkult defended mechanistic positions in ideology. It sawthe development of proletarian class consciousness as basedprimarily on production practice, and not on class struggle. Itsystematically underestimated the effects of the capitalist divi-sion of labor on the proletariat and was inclined to deny thenecessary role of theory and of the proletarian party.

After October, Lenin considered it necessary to fight Bog-danov’s ideas again, especially in the form which they assumedin Proletkult, an organization which was joined by some Bol-sheviks. He waged this fight on the ideological and organiza-tional planes. His interventions against Proletkult culminatedin a circular from the CC, dated December 1, 1920, placing theProletkult movement under the direction of the Commissariat ofEducation, thereby reducing its importance. These interven-tions led also to Bukharin’s writing, with Lenin’s agreement, asevere ideological critique (Pravda, November 22, 1921) andarticles published in Pravda on October 24-25, 1922, and January4, 1923, over the signature of Y. Yakovlev, which were directlyinspired by Lenin. The second of these articles was entitled,significantly: “Menshevism under the Mask of Proletkult.” Onthese matters, see Ästhetik und Kommunikation. Beiträge zurPolitischen Erziehung, nos. 5–6 (February 1972), pp. 149, 200–201; also Karl Eimermacher, Dokumente zur SowjetischenLiteraturpolitik 1917–1932; and Lenin’s correspondence withBukharin about Proletkult, in Lenin, Über Kultur und Kunst (acollection of his writings on these subjects). Some of Lenin’scritical writings on these questions were published for the firsttime in the symposium Voprosy kultury pri diktature pro-letariata, reproduced in Ästhetik und Kommunikation, nos. 5-6(February 1972), pp. 113 ff. See also Lenin, O literature iiskusstve, pp. 470–472; and CW, vol. 35, p. 554, and vol. 45,pp. 392–393.

30. Stalin, Leninism, p. 602.31. See above, pp. 508 ff.32. Marx, A Contribution, p. 21.


33. Stalin, Leninism, p. 604. It will be observed that this formulationmakes use of the pair of concepts “nature” and “society,” whichare treated as being “external” to one another, but with thesecond of them presented as an “environment.” In this waythe formal conditions are set up for a pseudo-dialectics contrastingtwo “entities” between which relations are external in character(I shall come back to this question, above, pp. 536 ff.) and whichcan develop between them “a process of exchange.” This themeis also explicitly present in Bukharin’s book Historical Mate-rialism (published in 1921). In this work we see clearly that ifthe problem of “social development” is presented like that, ittends to show this development as depending on changes in therelations between “society” and “nature,” these changes beingascribed to the “development of the productive forces.” Thus,Bukharin writes: “ . . . the internal structure of the system [i.e.,the internal equilibrium of a society—C. B.] . . . must changetogether with the relation existing between the system and itsenvironment. The latter relation is the decisive factor; for theentire situation of the system, the fundamental forms of its

In the chapter entitled “The Equilibrium Between Society andNature” Bukharin adds that the productive forces determinesocial development because they express the interrelation be-tween society and its environment, and that in this interrelationis to be found the “cause producing a change in the system

A similar pseudo-dialectics is employed in Bogdanov’s Vseob-shchaya organizatsionnaya nauka (tektologiya), a Germantranslation of which (Allgemeine Organisationslehre: Tek-tologie) appeared in Berlin in 1926.

34. Stalin, Leninism, p. 604.35. Ibid., pp. 605–606.36. Ibid., p. 606. According to Stalin, the “unity” of these two

aspects is realized in “the process of production of material

with, external to each other.37. Ibid., p. 607. It will be observed that the problem of reproduc-

tion of the production relations, a fundamental point in Marx’sanalyses, is never mentioned.

38. Ibid., p. 608.39. The fundamental role here attributed to the instruments of

production calls for special attention, because it has a number of

itself” (ibid., p. 107).

motion . . . are determined by this relation only” (ibid., p. 79).

values” (ibid., p. 607)—which implies that they are, to begin


ideological and political implications (to which I shall return).We notice again the similarity between Stalin’s formulationsjust quoted and those of Bogdanov. For the latter, indeed, theproductive forces tended to be reduced to technology. Thus, in1923 he wrote: “In the first place, a development takes place inthe domain in which man directly confronts nature, in the do-main of the technological relations between man and nature, inthe domain of the productive forces” (Bogdanov, “Principles ofOrganization of Social Technology and Economy,” in VestnikKommunisticheskoy Akademii, vol. 4 [1923], p. 272, quoted inGeschichte der Politischen Ökonomie des Sozialismus, by agroup of Leningrad University writers, p. 59). Here, as can beseen, “productive forces” are reduced to “technological rela-tions.”

The similarity between the role ascribed in Dialectical andHistorical Materialism to the instruments of production andsome of Bogdanov’s formulations brings out the contradictoryrelations that existed between Bolshevism and Bogdanov’sdeas. These were both relations of the presence (albeit denied)of modified forms of Bogdanovism within the Bolshevikideological formation, and relations of exteriority. These spe-cific relations, and the prestige which Bogdanov continued for along time to enjoy in the Bolshevik Party, explain the equallycontradictory, and unusually “carefully expressed” judgmentson Bogdanov pronounced by the Party’s leaders.

Thus, in his speech of December 7, 1927, at the FifteenthParty Congress, Stalin mentioned the names of some formermembers of the Party who had left it as a result of seriousdivergences. Among these was Bogdanov, concerning whom heuttered this appreciation, with which none of the others werehonored: “He was one of the most prominent leaders of ourParty” (Stalin, Works, vol. 10, p. 380). This formulation wasremarkable when one remembers that Bogdanov had brokenwith the Party long before, and had gone on developing concep-tions which were officially considered to be incompatible withBolshevism.

Again, in 1928, when Bogdanov died, Bukharin published inPravda (April 8) an article paying homage to the theoreticianwho had passed away, saying that he had “played an enormousrole in the development of our Party and in the development ofsocial thought in Russia.”

In the same article, however, Bukharin described Bogdanov


as a “semi-Marxist,” adding that his “divergence from orthodoxMarxism and from Bolshevism became . . . for Bogdanov apersonal tragedy” (Cohen, Bukharin, pp. 15, 414).

In his contribution to Geschichte der Politischen Ökonomiedes Sozialismus (chapter 3), L. D. Shirokorad recalls the greatpolemic in the 1920s against Bogdanov’s conception of the pro-ductive forces, but he considers it possible to state that thispolemic ceased at the beginning of the 1930s because by then“the influence of non-Marxist traditions in the elaboration ofthis category” had been, “in the main, overcome” (p. 77). If welook closely we find that the polemic ceased, in fact, becauseeventually a convergence came about between the positionsthereafter defended by Bolshevism and the Bogdanovist con-ception of the productive forces and their role. (In the Russianoriginal of the book quoted—Istoriya politicheskoy ekonomikisotsializma—the page references are 62 and 88.)

40. All that we find are “the labouring masses,” who are “the chiefforce” only in “the process of production” (Stalin, Leninism, p.608), and do not figure as the agents of social change. This iswhy, says Stalin, “historical science . . . must above all devoteitself to the history of the producers of material values” (ibid.).

41. Ibid., pp. 608–609.42. See above, p. 569, note 21.43. Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 5, pp. 19–539, and vol. 6,

pp. 105–212.44. Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 40.45. Marx, Contribution, p. 21.46. Marx, Capital (London), vol. I, p. 493.47. Marx, “Results of the Immediate Process of Production,” ap-

pendix to Capital (London), vol. I, p. 1026.48. Ibid., pp. 1064–1065.49. Stalin, Leninism, p. 608 (my emphasis—C. B.).50. The obscuring of the role of production relations was overde-

termined by the increasing identification of these relations withthe juridical forms of ownership (See above, pp. 527 ff.).

51. Those conditions were analyzed in volume I of the presentwork.

52. See above, pp. 217 ff.53. Stalin, Works, vol. 12, p. 171 (my emphasis—C. B.).54. It will be observed that Stalin attached the formulation that he

put forward to an extract from Lenin’s report on the tax-in-kindto the Tenth Party Congress. An essential point in that report


was Lenin’s denunciation of “dreamers” who (during theperiod of “war communism”) “thought the economics basis, theeconomic roots of small farming could be reshaped in threeyears” (Lenin, CW, vol. 32, p. 216). Lenin emphasized that whatwas decisive was the transforming of the peasants’ mentalityand habits, which required time, and necessitated that theylearn to organize themselves and administer. True, in order tostrengthen his argument against harmful haste, Lenin addedthat the changing of peasant mentality would have to have also amaterial basis. It is not difficult to see that this meant somethingquite different from changing the “mentality” of the peasantsthrough the use of machinery and tractors.

55. We know that, in fact, the changeover to collectivization did notwait for mechanization—and that was correct. What was notcorrect was that the tempo at which collectivization was de-veloped was essentially the result of harsh coercion of the peas-ant masses.

56. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 2, p. 391. This passage echoes strikingly the claims made by Bogdanov, who, in an article published in 1918 by Proletarskaya Kultura, declared that proletarian consciousness, the “working together in comradeship,” would “deepen with the development of technology, . . . broaden with the increase of the proletariat in the towns, in gigantic industrial enterprises” (Ästhetik und Kommunikation, nos. 5–6 [February 1972], p. 81). We know that Lenin’s attitude to the development of large towns was very different. In an interview with H. G. Wells he said that there was no future for them under socialist conditions (Russia In The Shadows, pp. 133–134).

57. We have already seen that positions such as this reproducedthose of Bogdanov and, more generally, of Proletkult. Thus, inan article published in Pravda on September 27, 1922, by one ofthe leaders of the movement, and annotated critically by Lenin,we read:

The class consciousness of the proletariat is formed in theprocess of capitalist production, that is where collectiveclass psychology is born. . . . This “being” determines theclass consciousness of the proletariat. It is alien to thepeasant, the bourgeois, the intellectual. . . . The peasantdepends, in the process of his individual work, uponthe forces of nature. . . . The proletarian enjoys completelyclear relations with the external world. . . . On these


statements Lenin merely notes, in the margin: “And whatabout the religion of the workers and peasants?” (Ästhetikund Kommunikation, nos. 5–6 [February 1972], pp. 116–117; Lenin, O literature, pp. 570–571).

The simplistic formulations of Bogdanovism encouraged theproletariat to isolate itself from the rest of the masses, in thename of a unique “existential experience.” They led those whowere influenced by these formulations to look on the peasantswith distrust, to see in them unreliable allies for the workingclass and to regard the NEP as a dangerous “concession” whichmust be taken back as soon as possible. Conceptions akin to thiswere obviously at work in the second half of the 1920s.)

58. This slogan appeared in Stalin’s speech, on “the tasks of busi-ness executives,” to the leaders of industry, on February 4, 1931(Stalin, Works, vol. 13, p. 43). See the remarks of B. Fabrègues,“Staline et le matérialisme historique,” in Communisme, nos.22–23 (May–August 1976), p. 60.

59. The theme of a “spontaneous” disappearance of the divisionbetween manual and mental labor was not explicitly developedby the Bolshevik Party, but it was implicit in the absence of anyconcrete struggle to prepare for this disappearance, or even anyreflection on the conditions for such a struggle.

This theme was explicitly developed by Bogdanov, whowrote, for example:

In so far as . . . the machine is improved and made morecomplex, and becomes more and more a mechanismfunctioning automatically, which requires living supervi-sion, conscious intervention, constant active attention—theunification of the two types [of labor, manual and mental]becomes more obviously necessary. . . . Henceforth, thistendency to synthesis is manifested sufficiently to paralyzethe influence of the previous separation between “spiritual”and “physical” labor in the workers’ thinking (Bogdanov,Allgemeine Organisationslehre, p. 55, quoted in Ästhetikund Kommunikation, nos. 5–6 [February 1972], p. 95).

The same theme is met with in Bogdanov’s work Art and theWorking Class, where he writes: “Mechanised production‘heals,’ so to speak, the basic cleavages in the nature of work.”Emphasizing the role of the machine, Bogdanov adds that theworker “is in command of this mechanical slave. The more


complex and perfected the machine, the more the worker’s taskis reduced to one of supervision, examination of all the phasesand conditions of the machine’s operation, and intervention inits operation when this becomes necessary.”

On the basis of this conception, it is not surprising to findBogdanov saying that “it is only in the development of labourin the development of the forces of production, that lies thefulfilment of the socialist ideal” (quoted in F. Champarnaud,Révolution et contre-révolution culturelle en U.R.S.S., pp. 429,439).

60. The German Ideology, in Marx and Engels, Collected Works,vol. 5, p. 59.

61. Proletarian hegemony is necessary for the transition fromcapitalism to communism. This hegemony must be distin-guished from domination. We know that the idea figures inLenin’s analyses (See volume I of the present work, pp. 93–94).It was developed by Gramsci: but it is not clear whether forGramsci it had exactly the same meaning as for Lenin.

62. It is not possible to present these analyses here: that wouldprovide the subject for a distinct piece of research. Let usmerely recall the passage in which Marx notes that “the exis-tence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposesthe existence of a revolutionary class” (The German Ideology,in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 5, p. 60), pointing outthat what is needed for a revolution is “the formation of arevolutionary mass which revolts not only against separate con-ditions of the existing society but against the existing ‘produc-tion of life’ itself, the ‘total activity’ on which it was based [i.e.,the totality of social relations—C. B.]” ibid., p. 54).

Marx emphasizes that, in this struggle, the revolutionaryclass changes itself, and that this change is indispensable if it isto be able to build a new society: here we are very far away froman ideological transformation resulting from the struggle forproduction, technological changes, and “education.” To be re-called, too, in this connection, is the passage from Marx quoted in volume I of the present work, p. 177.

63. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh (1954 ed.), vol. 3, p. 195, quoted inCarr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2, p. 446.

64. This conception was to be reaffirmed at the Sixteenth PartyCongress. It led, in 1929, to explicit revision of one of thefundamental theses of Marxism concerning the withering away


of the state—a thesis which Stalin said was “incompletelyworked out and inadequate” (see volume I of the present work,p. 30). He offered no “justification” for this revision other thanthe fact of what had happened.

65. History of the C.P.S.U.(B.), p. 305.66. Marx used the expression “revolution from above” to describe

the policy of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte in an article of 1859,“Reaction is Carrying out the Programme of the Revolution”(Marx and Engels, Werke, vol. 13, p. 414); and Engels, in hisCritique of the Erfurt Programme, described the effects ofBismarck’s policy in 1866 and 1870 as “revolution from above”(Marx and Engels, Selected Works in Three Volumes, vol. 2, p.436). On this point, see Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. 2,pp. 446 ff.

67. Lenin, CW, vol. 25, pp. 381–491. It is noteworthy that theHistory of the C.P.S.U.(B.), which gives a systematic survey ofLenin’s principal writings, refrains from giving any presenta-tions of The State and Revolution.

68. See volume I of the present work, p. 461. The whole letter isextremely interesting (Marx and Engels, Selected Corre-spondence, pp. 352–357).

69. Marx, “First Outline of The Civil War In France,” in Marx andEngels, On The Paris Commune, pp. 149–150.

70. Ibid., pp. 152, 153, 156. In these same pages Marx says that thesweeping away of the “state parasites” implies that the newform of rule means “doing away with the state hierarchy al-together and replacing the haughteous [sic] masters of thepeople by its always removable servants, . . . paid like skilledworkmen . . . doing their work publicly, acting in broad day-light, with no pretensions to infallibility, not hiding itself be-hind circumlocution offices . . .” (ibid., pp. 154, 155).

71. See volume I of the present work, especially pp. 329 ff. and 490ff.

72. On Lenin’s statements and on the role subsequently ascribed tojuridical forms of ownership, by the Bolshevik Party, see vol-ume I of the present work, especially pp. 20 ff. and 143 ff.

73. It is in The Poverty of Philosophy that Marx deals most system-atically with this subject, but it constantly recurs in his majorwritings, as also in those of Engels, especially those producedafter the Paris Commune.

74. Marx and Engels, Selected Works in Three Volumes, vol. I. p.188.


75. See above, pp. 302–303.76. Let me recall that Lenin pointed out the variety of forms of

existence of capitalist relations in the Soviet state enterprises:the failure to keep the salaries of the technicians and specialistsdown to the level of the workers’ wages; the existence of asingle manager, nominated by the central bodies and solelyresponsible for the running of the enterprise; the “financialautonomy” which enabled the enterprise to dispose of part of itsprofits. See volume I of the present work, pp. 54, 54 n.; 156; 166;509–510.

77. Enterprises controlled by this bourgeoisie of a new type arewhat is called in China “capitalist enterprises with a socialistsignboard.” What is carried on in them is “private production”pursued under cover of state ownership. The functioning ofsuch enterprises tends to reproduce the features of enterprisesbelonging to big joint-stock companies (or to the capitaliststate), regarding which Marx observed: “It is private productionwithout the control of private property” (Capital [Moscow], vol.III, p. 429).

78. Such cooperation implies that the “plan” is worked out essen-tially from below upward—that it results from centralizationand coordination of initiatives and proposals coming from theproducers themselves.

79. I shall come back to this point in the next section of this chapter.80. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 705. A longer extract from this passage will

be found above, p. 49.81. The idea of struggle between market anarchy and harmonious

development through planning is presented in Preobrazhens-ky’s The New Economics, pp. 55–66.

82. Ibid., p. 58. This maximum accumulation was to be obtained bycharging prices which ensured a transfer of value to the state

83. Ibid., p. 63. The idea of “social technology” is one of the keyideas in Bogdanov’s book on “tectology.”

84. See above, pp. 62, 64 ff.85. Reznik in Planovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 1 (1931), p. 49.86. Marx observes that bourgeois economists are interested only in

the magnitude of value, not in how it is determined, for “underthe coarse influence of the practical bourgeois, they give theirattention, from the outset, and exclusively, to the quantitativeaspect of the question” (Capital (London), vol. I, p. 141).

sector (ibid., pp. 147 ff.).


87. See volume I of the present work, pp. 19 ff.88. Stalin, Leninism, p. 592. This exposition forms the first part of

his essay, already quoted, on Dialectical and Historical Mate-rialism.

89. Ibid.90. Ibid.91. Ibid., p. 59592. Lenin, CW, vol. 38, p. 223.93. Stalin, Leninism, p. 595.94. See note 33, above.95. For Bogdanov the category of “organization,” with all its or-

ganicist implications, was fundamental, and this led him toendow “society” (the more or less complete realization of theessence of organization) with the status of a subject in history.He wrote: “In technology society struggles with nature andmasters it. Society organises the external world in accordancewith the interests of its life and its development. In theeconomy, society organises the relations of collaboration anddistribution among men . . .” (quoted in Champarnaud, Révo-lution, p. 441 [my emphasis—C. B.]).

With Bogdanov we have an idealistic philosophy of historydominated by a “principle of organization,” in the biologicalsense. According to this, organization strives to realize itselfthrough history. Class societies are merely imperfect “realiza-tions” of the principle of organization, owing to the contradic-tions that prevail in them and undermine them. But the princi-ple of organization must triumph in the end. This triumph willbe brought about by the socialist revolution, which puts an endto contradiction and ensures the victory of organization.

The proletariat thus figures as the agent of realization of theidea of organization, and socialist society as the form of realiza-tion of an essence which has been at work since the beginningof human society and will eventually be fulfilled. This fulfill-ment implies, in its turn, the emergence of a new “essence ofMan.” The idealistic character of this ideological construction,which corresponds to a specific philosophical humanism, isperfectly plain (see Lecourt, Lyssenko, p. 158, n. 20).

This idealistic construction enables Bogdanov to elaborate a“model” of socialist society which is characterized by cen-tralization, rationalization, and the planning of tasks. The role of


the masses who make history is absent from this conception,while the role of the organizers and planners becomes funda-mental.

96. Stalin, Leninism, p. 603.97. Let us recall here that Bogdanovism developed after a tempo-

rary ebbing of the revolutionary workers’ movement, when,under the conditions of the Stolypin reaction and of a bourgeoisagrarian policy, it was especially difficult for the labor move-ment to join forces with the peasant masses. In this situation asmall group of former Bolsheviks, headed by Bogdanov, workedout an ideological system which “glorified” the relative isola-tion of the working class of Russia. They issued ultraleft slogansand declared that the Russian proletariat would be able to play aleading role not through alliance with the peasantry but throughthe special position as organizer with which its special relation-ship with modern technology was supposed to endow it.

Bogdanov’s philosophical theses provided theoretical condi-tions (abandonment of dialectical materialism) which made itpossible to give an appearance of legitimacy to the “ultraleft”conceptions of the period. See on this two articles by Lenin:“Certain Features of the Historical Development of Marxism,”in Zvezda, December 23, 1910, and “Stolypin and the Revolu-tion,” in Sotsial-Demokrat, no. 24 (1911), in CW, vol. 17, pp.39–44 and 247–256).

98. Lenin, CW, vol. 38, p. 359.99. Stalin, Works, vol. 11, pp. 255 ff. (“The Industrialisation of the

Country and the Right Deviation in the C.P.S.U[B]”).100. Ibid., p. 293.101. Lenin, CW, vol. 36, p. 594. On this point, see also volume I of

the present work, p. 323.102. Ibid., CW, vol. 32, p. 178.103. At the Tenth Party Congress Lenin said “Comrades, let’s not

have an opposition just now!” (CW, vol. 32, p. 200 [myemphasis—C. B.]).

104. These decisions were embodied in the “Resolution on PartyUnity” adopted by the Tenth Party Congress, regarding whichLenin spoke of “an extreme measure that is being adoptedspecially, in view of the dangerous situation” (ibid., p. 258).

105. Quoted in Carr, The Interregnum, p. 363.


At that time open debate ceased, and there were many cases of“rallying” to the general line. The contradictions in the Partyseemed to have been “eliminated.” In reality, they were repro-duced in new forms: but that happened in connection with theproblems of a period outside the limits of the present volume.

107. Lenin, CW, vol. 29, p. 183. See volume I of the present work,pp. 271–272.

108. See above, p. 346.109. Quoted in Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 1, p. 237 (my

emphasis—C. B.)110. Zinoviev, The Anti-Soviet Parties and Tendencies (1922),

quoted in Alexander Skirda, Kronstadt 1921: Prolétariat contrebolchevisme, pp. 26-27. Zinoviev was actually quoting Lenin’spolitical report to the Eleventh Party Congress, on March 27,1922 (CW, vol. 33, p. 278).

111. Pravda, August 23, 1924, quoted in Carr, Socialism, vol. 1,p. 104, n. 3.

112. Stalin, Works, vol. 6, pp. 186–188. This passage stresses the“spirit of discipline” with which the proletariat must be filled,and the Party’s role as educator, but does not say anything aboutthe role of the masses in educating the Party.

113. Stalin, Works, vol. 8, p. 41.114. Ibid., pp. 46, 49, 51, 53, 56. On this question see the article by

Fabrègues in Communisme, no. 24.115. Meaning the thesis expounded by Lenin in 1902 in What Is To

Be Done?, where he defended the theory of the union, throughthe Party, of Marxist theory with the labor movement (see Le-nin, CW, vol. 5). This is not the place to discuss all Lenin’stheses in What Is To Be Done? or the corrections to them whichhe made later on.

116. See above, p. 542.117. Thus, Marx speaks of the need for “free scientific inquiry”

(Capital, vol. I, p. 92), and declines to “submit” to the ideas ofthe German Party. Similarly, Mao Tse-tung says that “it is . . .necessary to be careful about questions of right and wrong inthe arts and sciences, to encourage free discussion and avoidhasty conclusions” (“On Correct Handling of ContradictionsAmong the People,” in Four Essays on Philosophy, p. 114).

118. Lecourt, Lyssenko, pp. 60 ff. Lecourt shows (pp. 92 ff.) the socialfoundations of Lysenkoism.

119. A. Badiou draws attention to this point when he notes that what

106.


he calls “the promotion of the principle of totality” (resultingfrom nonsubordination of the “laws of dialectics” to the primacyof contradiction over identity) may well serve to facilitate infil-tration by metaphysics (Théorie de la contradiction, p. 38).

120. This interpretation began to appear as soon as Marx’s ideasbecame widespread. It is found in the different variants of“economism.” At the beginning of the twentieth century it wasgenerally accepted in the Second International. But it is alien toMarxism-Leninism. Thus, Lenin’s formulation of the theory ofthe “weakest link” in the imperialist chain, which made it possi-ble to see tsarist Russia as the “locus” of the first victory of thesocialist revolution, implies rejection of an evolutionist interpre-tation of Marx’s ideas, an interpretation which was usually linkedwith dominance of the problematic of the productive forces.(See volume I of this work, pp. 32 ff.)

121. These criticisms appeared in an article published in October1877 in Otechestvenniye Zapiski. Marx’s reply is known to usfrom a copy sent by Engels to Vera Zasulich, and which ap-peared in a journal published by Russian revolutionary émigrésin Geneva, Vestnik Narodnoy Voli, no. 5 (1886).

122. Quoted in Blackstock and Hoselitz, eds., Marx and Engels onThe Russian Menace to Europe, pp. 217–218. Marx’s referenceis to his study of primitive accumulation as this took place inEurope.

123. Ibid., p. 278. See also volume I of the present work , pp. 214 ff.124. Thus, Engels showed the specific role played in the fate of the

Roman world of the later Empire, and right down to the ninthcentury, by the fact that it “despised work as slavish” (TheOrigin of the Family, Private Property and the State, in Marxand Engels, Selected Works in Three Volumes, vol. 2, p. 314).

125. Stalin, Leninism, p. 607.126. Ibid., p. 596. These formulations imply the idea of a “natural

order” of succession of modes of production, meaning that it isnot men who make their own history. History appears as a“subject” of which men are merely the instruments. So early asin The German Ideology Marx condemned any turning of his-tory into a “subject,” when he wrote: “History is nothing butthe succession of the separate generations, each of which usesthe materials, the capital funds, the productive forces, handeddown to it by all preceding generations. . . . This can bespeculatively distorted so that later history is made the goal of


earlier history. . . . Thereby history receives its own specialgoals and becomes ‘a person ranking with other persons’” (Marxand Engels, Collected Works, vol. 5, p. 50).

127. On the connections between ouvriérisme and “technicist” con-ceptions, See above, pp. 516 ff., and 518 ff.

128. Proletarian positions start from the place of the proletariat in therelations of production (and in the process of production), fromits total separation from the means of production. Ouvriéristepositions start from the place of the working class in the laborprocess, its role in relation to tools and machinery: they are thus“technicist” in character.

129. Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme was written in 1875.At first, the leaders of the German Social Democrats opposed itscirculation, and it was not published until 1891 by the Partyjournal, which even then “censored” parts of it (see Engels’letter to Kautsky, February 23, 1891, in Marx and Engels,Selected Works in Three Volumes, vol. 2, pp. 38–39). Sub-sequently Marx’s original text was reconstituted on the basis ofhis manuscript.

130. Ibid., p. 20.131. Ibid.132. In the Gotha Programme the statist character of the line put

forward is expressed in the formula: “The German workers’party strives . . . for the free state” (ibid., p. 22). Marx com-ments that this must mean a state which is “free” in relation tothe workers—as it is already, he adds, in the German Empireand in tsarist Russia (ibid., p. 25).

133. Hence the formulation in the Gotha Programme stating that“the working class strives for its emancipation first of all withinthe framework of the present-day national state.” This state-ment also contradicts the Communist Manifesto, which saysthat the workers’ struggle is international in content and na-tional only “in form” (ibid., p. 21).

134. See above, note 2.135. See volume I of the present work, pp. 391–392.136. The consequences examined here are those which directly af-

fected the Soviet Union itself. The consequences for the inter-national Communist movement are not considered: they wouldrequire treatment at considerable length.

137. XIII-y Syezd RKP(b), (1963), pp. 505, 606; quoted in Rigby,Communist Party Membership, p. 137.


138. Ästhetik und Kommunikation, nos. 5–6 (February 1972), p. 119;Lenin, O literature, pp. 572–573.

139. Owing to the mechanistic and metaphysical nature of this con-ception, the categories of “change” and “transformation” arepushed into the background, whereas in dialectical materialismthey occupy a central position. When this “inhibition” reaches acertain stage, it favors the replacement of ideological struggleby a policy of repression.

140. This presence had, of course, social bases. The preferencegiven to very large, “up-to-date” production units seems tocorrespond to the role played by the heads of the enterprises, arole the importance of which seems to have been proportionateto the size of the enterprises they controlled.

141. It is to the point to note that the role played by supporters ofProletkult in the development of “NOT” was fully in accord-ance with Bogdanov’s ideas. Thus, in the article entitled “Onthe Ideological Front” (Pravda, September 27, 1922), written byV. Pletnev, a spokesman for Proletkult it is clear that Bog-danov’s ideas about “organization” lead to the masses beingtreated as “material” falling within the competence of“specialists.” Pletnev says that, after the October Revolution,specialists are needed not only in the domain of technology andthe economy: “The age we live in assigns us the task of forminga new type of savant: the social engineer, the engineer specialis-ing in organisation, who is able to cope with phenomena andtasks which are getting bigger and bigger” (Ästhetik und Kom-munikation, nos. 5–6 [February 1972], pp. 120–121). In hisannotation of this article Lenin put two query marks against thisproposition (see Lenin, O literature, pp. 574–575).

The same ideological tendency was shown in the formulationdescribing the proletarian writer as an “engineer of souls.”Here we see again how the ideology of technology and organi-zation becomes transformed into the ideology of techniciansand organizers.

142. See above, pp. 238 ff.143. Trud, March 11 and 12, 1924, and Byulleten II-oy Vsesoyuznoy

Konferentsii po NOT, pp. 27-36, quoted in Carr, Socialism, vol.I, p. 384.

144. See above, pp. 248 ff.145. At the beginning of 1926 this authority was, nevertheless, far

from firmly established. The increasing gap between the in-


comes of the workers and those of the engineers, specialists,and managers gave rise to hostility on the part of some workers.Faced with this development, the Party called for strengtheninglabor discipline. Stalin demanded that the workers cease toshow distrust toward the cadres and managers of industry, who,he said, were performing a task which required that they be“surrounded with an atmosphere of confidence and support”and not “castigated” or “kicked” (Stalin, Works, vol. 8, pp. 144,146).

These formulations show that the increasing concentration ofauthority in the hands of the specialists and administrators wascoming up against a certain resistance from the workers. As wehave seen, the role and authority of the specialists and adminis-trators was challenged on a number of occasions, especially atthe beginning of 1928, with the development of the productionconferences (See above, pp. 222 ff.); but we have seen, also, thatthe role played by these conferences soon diminished.

146. “The Party’s Immediate Tasks in the Countryside,” in Stalin,Works, vol. 6, pp. 315 ff.

147. R. E. F. Smith, ed., The Russian Peasant 1920 and 1984, pp.13–14.

148. Ibid., p. 12.149. Ibid.150. Ibid.151. Ibid.152. Ibid., p. 13.153. Ibid., p. 15.154. Ibid., p. 16.155. Stalin, Works, vol. 7, p. 26.156. Ibid., pp. 28–29 (my emphasis—C. B.).157. Ibid., vol. 8, p. 99.158. Smith, The Russian Peasant, p. 26. (I have emphasized the words

“whole” and “Russian,” which seem to me typical of Gorky’sthinking—C. B.)

159. Gorky, in Russky Sovremennik, vol. I (1924), p. 235, quoted inCarr, Socialism, vol. I, pp. 122–123 (my emphasis—C. B.).

160. The resolution “On the Immediate Tasks of Party-Building,”K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. 1, pp. 820 ff.

161. In this respect the resolution merely ratified the decision, takennot long before, to increase the Party’s membership through awide campaign of recruitment, known as the “Lenin enrol-


ment.” Such mass-scale recruitment ran counter to Lenin’sviews, as expressed in a letter to Molotov in which he warnedagainst the negative consequences of too rapid recruitment fromamong a mass of workers who, at that time, did not form a trueproletariat, since many of the persons working in the factorieswere “petty-bourgeois who have become workers by chance”(Lenin, CW, vol. 33, p. 254). The situation described by Leninwas not basically different in early 1924.

162. K.P.S.S. v rezolyutsiyakh, vol. I, p. 833.163. “On Agitation and Propaganda Work,” in ibid., pp. 871 ff.164. Ibid., p. 875.165. Quoted in D. Lindenberg, L’Internationale communiste, p.

317 (my emphasis—C. B.).166. Ibid., pp. 326–327.167. Carr, Socialism, vol. 1, pp. 121–122.168. See volume I of the present work, pp. 420–426.

589

Part 5The “great change” and the emergenceof new contradictions

It would be pointless to attempt to recapitulate here theresults of the foregoing analyses. It is, however, necessary todiscuss, for the last time, some of the explanations which havebeen and are still being offered for the “final crisis of theNEP.” Depending on the explanation one accepts, one ap-preciates differently the real content of the “great change” atthe end of 1929 and its class consequences.

One of the most widely accepted interpretations of the“final crisis of the NEP” states that, after 1928, a continuationof the NEP would have doomed agricultural production (andespecially the production of grain for the market) to stagnationand even decline, thereby preventing the necessary develop-ment of industry. This is the way the situation was appreciatedat the time by the Bolshevik Party. It was reaffirmed in theHistory of the C.P.S.U.(B.) which was approved by the CC in1938 and in which we read the following:

All the signs pointed to the danger of a further decline in theamount of marketable grain. . . . There was a crisis in grainfarming which was bound to be followed by a crisis in livestockfarming. The only escape from this predicament was a change tolarge-scale farming which would permit the use of tractors andagricultural machines . . . , to take the course of amalgamatingthe small peasant holdings into large socialist farms, collectivefarms, which would be able to use tractors and other modernmachines for a rapid advancement of grain farming and a rapidincrease in the marketable surplus of grain.1

This “economistic” interpretation cannot be sustained. Atthe end of the 1920s the potentialities of NEP farming werestill considerable, and could have been quickly mobilized.


For that purpose it was necessary to isolate the kulaks politi-cally and to give systematic aid to the poor and middle peas-ants, in particular by making available to them a minimum ofthe instruments of labor they needed, so that they might entervoluntarily and effectively upon the road to collective farming.Substantial positive results could have been quickly attainedin that way, provided that there was no attempt to impose“from above” upon the peasants tempos and forms of organiza-tion which did not yet correspond to their aspirations. Experi-ence showed that, by acting otherwise, by coercing the peas-ant masses, the kulaks were not isolated, while the develop-ment of “large-scale mechanized production” failed to givethe expected stimulus to grain production and stockbreeding.On the contrary, for several years these branches of agriculturewent down and down—which nevertheless did not preventindustry from advancing at a fast rate.

Even today, though, we find repeated the interpretation ofthe “great change” as having been an “economic necessity”imposed by the “inevitable” stagnation and decline of agricul-tural production at the end of the NEP and by the contradic-tion which developed, as a result, between agriculture andindustry. This interpretation is put forward today by Sovieteconomists and historians. Thus, in a work published in Mos-cow in 1964, the Soviet historian Yakovtsevsky repeated thethesis of the “exhaustion” of the potentialities of NEP agricul-ture and the resulting contradiction with the needs of indus-trialization. He wrote:

The lagging of agriculture behind industry . . . showed that theimpulse to development given to agriculture by the OctoberRevolution had, in the main, been exhausted. The old socialbasis—small-scale individual peasant farming—could no longerbe the source of further development for agriculture. An urgentnecessity had been created for agricultural production to moveover on to the rails of large-scale collective farming.2

But it is one thing to assert the historical necessity, ifsocialism is to be built, developing collective farming, andquite another to assert, as this writer does, that there existed in


1927–1929 an “urgent necessity” to increase agricultural pro-duction through collectivization. This assertion is all the moresenseless in that, as has been pointed out, the actual fall inessential agricultural production which occurred after the“great change” of 1929 did not prevent a massive increase inindustrial production.

The foregoing “economistic” interpretation is frequentlycombined with a more “political” one which presents theproblem of the necessity of the “great change” in terms of thethreat from the kulaks, which is alleged to have increasedtoward the end of the NEP owing to the increased economicrole of the rich peasants. This combination of the two interpre-tations is used by J. Elleinstein when he writes, dealing withthe situation at the end of 1927: “Industrialisation was stillinadequate and agriculture was marking time, while the roleof the kulaks was increasing in the countryside, like that of theNepmen in the towns.” 3

As regards agriculture “marking time” this was due pre-cisely to the adoption of measures which departed from theNEP line and provoked discontent among the peasant masses.As for the role played by the kulaks, this was a limited one,economically, and could easily have been reduced by relyingfirmly on the aspirations of the poor and middle peasants andhelping them to organize themselves. The thesis of a constantand “inevitable” strengthening of the kulaks, to which accel-erated and immediate collectivization was the only answer,does not square with the actual situation. In 1927 the relativeweight of the kulak farms in agricultural production was farfrom being decisive, and mobilization of the existing poten-tialities of the small- and middle-sized farms could quicklyhave reduced this weight, together with the dependence ofthe poor and middle peasants on the rich ones.4 If it is possibleto speak of a “strengthening of the kulaks” in the last years ofthe NEP, this is so only if we mean a certain increase in theirpolitical influence which resulted from the mistakes made bythe Bolshevik Party in its relations with the poor and middlepeasants.

The interpretation according to which the “great change”


was due above all to a mass rallying by the middle peasants tocollective farming was put forward chiefly at the end of 1929.It does not stand up to an examination of the conditions inwhich collectivization took place, to observation of the rapidfall in the percentage of households collectivized which fol-lowed any relaxation of administrative pressure, or to consid-eration of the admitted “necessity” of carrying through collec-tivization in the form of a “revolution from above.”

In fact, the way that the turn to accelerated collectivizationwas effected, and the way in which collectivization was car-ried out (with extensive use of methods of coercion) resultedfrom the “demands” of a certain form and a certain tempo ofindustrialization. These “demands” compelled the estab-lishment of forms of organization of the peasantry and of ag-riculture (kolkhozes as large as possible, giant sovkhozes,machine-and-tractor stations) through which the state wouldbe better able to obtain in “sufficient” quantity the agricul-tural produce which it needed, and at prices which did notdetract from the financing of investment in industry.

The forms of agricultural organization set up after the aban-donment of the NEP were such as to offer the possibility oflevying from the peasantry a “tribute” sufficiently high toenable the industrialization plan to be realized. This expecta-tion was only partly fulfilled. Owing to the conditions inwhich they were established, these forms of organization didnot, for several years, enable essential agricultural productionto be increased: but they did integrate the peasantry in a set ofrelations which deprived them of the ability to decide whatthey would or would not deliver to the state. The latter thence-forth possessed means of coercion through which it couldforce the peasants to supply it with quantities of producecorresponding more or less to the forecasts laid down by thecentral planning organs. These quantities could be, at certaintimes, so large that both the peasants’ subsistence and theexpanded reproduction of agriculture were endangered.5

Thus, the “crisis of the NEP” and the “great change” towhich this led were determined above all by a policy of indus-trialization which aimed at very rapid growth rates for industry


and the introduction of the most “up-to-date” technology pos-sible. This policy led, in fact, to the sacrificing of agricultureto the development of industry.6

This industrialization policy and the forms of collectiviza-tion which it called for were not at all dictated by the “generallaws of the building of socialism” or by the “principles ofMarxism.” They resulted from a complex social process inwhich what was most important was the relations betweenclasses. Here a decisive role was played by the evolution ofrelations between the working class, the Party, and the leadersof industry —especially after the end of 1928, when the posi-tions of the leaders of industry were strengthened, togetherwith bourgeois forms of labor discipline. An equally importantrole was played by the evolution of relations between thepeasantry, the Soviet power, and the working class. Thesedevelopments, with the changes that resulted from them, weredirectly due to class struggles. The outcome of these strugglesdepended partly on the past history of the contending classesand the conditions in which new social forces were emerging(in the apparatuses of the Party and the State, and also in theeconomic apparatuses). It depended partly, also, as we haveseen, on the ideological relations in which these classes werecaught, relations bound up with the history of these classes,and on changes in the Bolshevik ideological formation.These changes determined (in the absence of any previousexperience of socialist industrialization) the way in which theParty appreciated the meaning and implications of the eco-nomic and social contradictions, and also the way of dealingwith these contradictions that seemed correct, or possible. Itwas in this unique history, which was also that of a revolution-ary ideological formation, that the “crisis of the NEP” and thesolutions found for it had their roots.

The uniqueness of this history does not, of course, signifythat no universal lessons can be derived from it. These lessonsconcern the effects of class struggles upon the reproductionand transformation of social relations, of the economic basis,and of the superstructure. They concern also the class conse-quences of these changes, the way in which Marxism and


revisionism, the socialist road and the capitalist road, comeinto conflict, and the conditions for victory of one over theother.

In volume III of this work we shall see what were theprincipal long-term consequences of the changes undergoneby the Soviet formation in the early 1930s. As for the moreimmediate consequences, which will also be examined in thenext volume, it is important to emphasize at once their con-tradictory aspects. On the one hand there was the completedefeat of the private bourgeoisie, the numerical increase of theSoviet proletariat, the modernization of the economy, and atremendous industrial advance, which contributed to the ad-vance of the forces fighting for socialism throughout the world.On the other hand, the worker-peasant alliance was gravelyweakened, the industrial development of the USSR becamemore and more one-sided, and the primacy accorded totechnology tended to strengthen the role played by the tech-nicians and by the administrative and economic apparatuses,and even by the apparatus of repression. Thus, contradictionsof a new type emerged. The subsequent changes undergoneby the Soviet social formation were determined by the classstruggles which were to develop amid these new contradic-tions and by the way in which the Bolshevik Party was toreckon with these contradictions and to try and handle them.

Notes

1. History of the C.P.S.U.(B.), pp. 286–287.2. Yakovtsevsky, Agrarnye otnosheniya, p. 297 (also in Recherches

internationales, no. 85 [no. 4 of 1975], p. 59).3. Elleinstein, Le Socialisme, p. 88.4. The History of the C.P.S.U.(B.) mentions, moreover, that at the

end of the NEP period “the process of the splitting up of the largefarms . . . was still going on” (pp. 286–287).

5. This was the case at the beginning of the 1930s, a point to which Ishall return in volume III.

6. It is necessary to say “in fact” because, according to the “plans,”agriculture was also supposed to develop rapidly.

595

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Principal journals and periodicals

In Russian

BednotaBolshevik


Byulleten Konyunkturnogo InstitutaEkonomicheskaya ZhiznEkonomicheskoye ObozreniyeIstoricheskiye ZapiskiIstorichesky ArkhivIzvestiyaIzvestiya Tsentralnogo Komiteta VKP(b)Leningradskaya PravdaMoskovskiye KommunistyNa Agrarnom FronteOtechestvenniye ZapiskiPartiinaya ZhiznPlanovoye KhozyaistvoPravdaPredpriyatiyeSobranie UzakoneniiSobranie ZakonovSotsialisticheskoye KhozyaistvoSotsialistichesky VestnikTorgovo-Promyshlennaya GazetaTrudVestnik Kommunisticheskoy AkademiiVoprosy TorgovliVoprosy Truda

In English

International Press Correspondence

In German

Ästhetik und Kommunikation: Beiträge zur Politischen ErziehungInternationale Presse-Korrespondenz

607

Index

Absenteeism, see Labor disci-pline

Accounting, 50Accumulation

characteristics of relations be-tween classes anddomination of expandedreproduction by de-mands of, 308–15

decisive role to, in develop-ment of industrial pro-duction, 388

expanded reproduction and,306–8

maximum, Party ideology and,506–7

optimum rate of, 383, 385planning and allocation of ac-

cumulated capital,75–76

See also Planningprimitive socialist, 367, 374

recourse to, 321–23Stalin support for idea of,

401problems of, and evolution of

peasant consumption,153–58

process of, 305–6Actual occupation criterion, 335Administrative apparatus

in collectivization drive, 464

criticized (1925), 370fight against bureaucratization

of, 435–39See also Bureaucracy

intelligentsia in, 565–66Party members in, 335, 339Right deviation and, 422, 423role of, in orienting produc-

tion, 281large-scale industry favored

by, 202, 203See also Industrialization;

Planningand soviets, 348–49

in rural soviets, 170–71See also Experts; Management

“Against Vulgarizing The Sloganof Self-Criticism” (Sta-lin), 230–31

Agrarian Code (1922), 87, 118,154, 174–75

Agrarian policy, see Agriculture;Collectivization

Agricultural Bank, 63Agricultural laborers (batraki)

attempt to organize, 41composition, 97use of, by peasants, 154–55,

369Agricultural machinery, 92, 378

exchange relations and, inNEP period, 138


Agricultural machinery (cont.)expanded production with, 416in grain procurement crisis 89and ideological changes,

519–20operators of, 560for reconstructing agriculture,

429–31See also Collectivization

Agricultural productioncrisis in (1930s), 108and drawing up of plans,

384–85increase in, over prewar figure

(to 1932), 448from individual farms, in NEP

period, 85industrialization and fall in

(1929), 110NEP dooming, 589–901921–1922 and 1926–1927, 281925–1926 gross, 103possible by collective means,

455rich peasants and, 368See also Agriculturall machin-

ery; and entries begin-ning with term: Grain

Agricultural productsconversion of, into money,

140–42gold-backed currency and ex-

ports of, 58See also Exports

price rise in (1929–1930),68–69

Agricultureas basis for industrial de-

velopment, see Indus-trialization

collective farms, 181, 473

aid given cooperative and,105–7

See also Collectivizationdegree of restoration of pro-

ductive forces in (1925),26

disadvantageous terms of tradefor, 74

individual farms, 85, 86land and, see Landpolicy on

aggravation of contradictionsthrough peasant and(1928–1929), 107–28

and agriculture as basis fordevelopment of indus-try, 377, 383–84, 409,410, 448, 477, 556

collectivization policy andindustrialization,592–93

Party role in, 357–58Party fight over policy,

398–403shortcomings of (1924–

1927), 102-–3at Sixteenth Conference,

454–59prices, see Prices

production relations in,135–62

technology and reconstructionof, 415–18, 429–31

See also Agriculturalmachinery; Collectivi-zation; Grain procure-ment; Industrialization

All-Union Central ExecutiveCommittee (VTsIK),347–48, 355

All-union trusts, 271


See also Financial autonomyAndreyev, A., 244, 375, 402Annenkov, Pavel, 514, 515Appropriation, planning and

process of, 74Authoritarianism, as class at-

titude, 170

Balance of payments, grain pro-curement and, 34

Balance of trade, 1926–1929, 114Bank financing electrification

(Elektrobank), 63Bank for industry (Prombank), 63Banking system, 62–67

illusions connected withfunctioning of, 63–67

Barter, state-peasant, 53–54Batraki, see Agricultural laborersBazarov, V., 279Bebel, A., 524Bednyaki, see Poor peasantsBogdanov, A. A., 510, 538Bolotnikov (peasant), 559Bolshevik (journal), 65Bolshevik Party, 312, 331–42

and contradictions betweenstate and private sector,197

dictatorship of proletariat and,see Dictatorship of pro-letariat

and financial autonomy, 272formation and transformation

of ideology of, 500–87effects of development of

internal contradictions,534–66

internal contradictions,508–34

gold standard and, 58–59in grain procurement crisis, 38,

40–41, 90emergency measures, 38–42grain balance and, 111See also Grain procurement

ideological and political rela-tions within, 355–59

See also Industrialization;Worker-peasant alliance

illusions of, on control ofeconomy, 65–66

illusions of, on development ofeconomy, 66–67

management andand experts in banking sys-

tem, 63and high salaries for mana-

gers, 211noninterference of, 234–35and relations between man-

agers and workers, 215and mass movement of 1928,

228–34membership of

bourgeoisie in, 333, 336,341–42

goal of proletarianizing,331–34

percent of peasants (1927–1929), 165

policy of recruitment,553–55

recruitment, 562–63working class, 334–35

NEP and, 25–27, 49, 205organizing peasants within

framework of, 99peasantry and, see Peasantryplanning organs and, 79, 80

See also Planning


Bolshevik Party (cont.)prices and

effect of price policy on,139–40

ideological conception ofprice, wages and profitin, 285–86, 288

price policy of, 36–37,150–51

production relations in“socialist sector,” 212

relations with working class,215, 334–41

piece wages and, 242–45and role of trade unions, 343as vanguard, 317wage differentials, 249–50See also Trade unions;

Working classin Smolensk affair, 223–35social composition of, 335–37

as new bourgeoisie, 226–27soviets and, 346–49, 367

rural soviets and, 167–73splitting over worker-peasant

alliance, 119See also Worker-peasant al-

liancesuspicious of egalitarian no-

tions, 179–80and unemployment

analysis of causes of, 295–98measures to deal with, 298

301weak control by, of monetary

and financial systems(until 1925), 67–68

See also Central Committee;Central Control Com-mission; PoliticalBureau; Secretariat

Bolshevism, 501, 504, 506reduced ability to use Marxism

to analyze reality, 535See also Bolshevik Party

Bonuses, financial autonomy andwage, 270

Bourgeois functions, 310–13See also Management

Bourgeoisiecharacteristics of, 552Chinese, 379defeat of, 594ideology of, 181–83intelligentsia and, 565intensification of class struggle

with, 427modified forms of relations be-

tween other classes and,317–18

monolithism serving, 540–41and nature of Soviet state, 429in Party membership, 333, 336,

341–42Party as new, 226–27proletariat and, in NEP period,

32, 33, 205–6rural, see Rich peasantsstate ownership and expropria-

tion of, 527in state-owned enterprises,

528See also Experts; Management

Budgetcontrol of (1925), 59gold-backed currency and, 58growth of expenditures,

388–891921–1922, 55restoration of balanced system

of, 62Bukharin, N. I., 364


final defeat of, 459and kulaks, 119, 155–56, 369,

382, 383on light and heavy industry,

385and new line, 116, 371, 373,

374, 392, 398–411, 418–35

and united opposition, 377view of world situation by

(1928), 404–6working class character of state

and, 553Bureau of Labor Statistics, 68Bureaucracy

bureaucratization, 423–24fight against, 191 224–25,

435–37, 440–42, 54Marx on, 525organization of supervision by

masses, 437–39restricting, not abolishing, 26See also Administrative ap-

paratus; Experts; Man-agement

CapitalLenin on, 211planning and allocation of ac-

cumulated, 75–76rural craftsmen and private,

144shortage of, 297, 373state ownership function as

collective, 291valorization of

industrial employment andunemployment and,293, 302

labor power and, 304–5

maintenance of demands ofprocess of, 320–21

See also Financial autonomyCapital (Marx), 22, 67, 237, 408,

515, 548Capitalism

crisis of (late 1920s), 404–5evolutionist view of history

and restoration of, 550exploitation under, 237–38industrialization to avoid,

366–67main base of, smashed, 471–72

See also Rich peasantsproducing means of produc-

tion under, 414and “Right danger” in Party,

406–7See also Accumulation

Capitalist characterof plans, 289–90of relations of production,

266–967Capitalist development

NEP as road of, 25, 26planning organs and, 73of productive forces, 314–19

Capitalist relations, 49, 50Marx on, 516planning principle and, 73,

288–90, 529–34unemployment and, 301–2See also Accumulation

CC, see Central CommitteeCCC, see Central Control Com-

missionCentral Committee (CC), 355,

364authority shifted out of, 400,

424, 459on banking system (1924), 64


Central Committee (cont.)Chinese question and, 379CLI and, 240, 241condemns Trotsky, 365“criticism” movement of 1928,

222decision of, on planning (Aug.

1927), 79decision on collectivization

(1930), 468, 470, 471depriving Gosbank and Nar-komfin of control overbudgetary policy, 59economic planning, bankingsystem and (1927), 65and grain procurement crisis,

40coercive measures to meetgrain quotas, 125and 1929 grain procurement,

123kulak question and (1929),

465-66labor discipline sought by, 234

calls for stricter labor disci-pline (1929), 452–53

and mass recruitment, 333membership of (1926), 372NEP and, 25and new line (1928–1929), 401,

412–413, 425–471925 resolution on leasing

land, and wage relationsin agriculture, 154

and one-man management, 236and piece wages, 213, 242–43and platform of the 46, 362, 363production conferences and

(1925), 218resolution on economic tasks

(Apr. 1925), 369resolution on production con-

ferences, 217

resolution on rationalization(1927), 214

resolution on trade (1927), 204on revolution from above, 523rural soviets and, 167, 168and tribute from peasantry, 403Trotsky and Zinoviev removed

from, 381and united opposition, 376,

380Central Committee of the

Woodworkers’ Union,344

Central Control Commission (CCC), 224, 364, 439

and new line (1928–1929),425–27

in purge of Party, 443, 444Central Executive Committee of

the Congress of Soviets,(TsIK), 118

Central Labor Institute (CLI),239-41

Central Statistical Board, 88, 89Central Trades Union Council,

235–36, 239, 246, 345production conferences and,

218–21and socialist emulation, 254

Chaplin, N., 240Chauvinism, Great-Russian,

565–66Chervonets roubles, 57, 60Chiang Kai-shek, 379China, 227, 312, 416Chinese Communist Party, 316,

379, 536Chinese revolution, 379, 380Circular No. 33 (March 1926;

“The Organization ofthe Management of In-dustrial Establish-

ment”), 226


Circulation, role of kulaks in,89–91

Civil Code (1922), 270Civil personality of enterprises,

270Civil War in France, The (Marx),

524–25Class relations, see specific

classesClass struggle, 427–28, 508–9

in Party ideology, 510Stalin’s view of, 512, 513See also Dictatorship of pro-

letariat; and specificclasses

Class Struggles in France, The(Marx), 527

CLD (Council of Labor and De-fense), 78, 268

CLI (Central Labor Institute),239–41

Collective agreements, 242, 373planning and, 245–47trade union role in, 343

Collective farms, see Agricul-ture; Collectivization

Collective formsbuilding, of production anddistribution, 66

peasants and craftsmen in(1924–1928), 85

of cultivation, 100–1of labor and production, 180,

181Collective ownership, transform-

ing state ownership into,of means of production,

291Collectivization, 321

area of cultivation possibleunder, 100–1, 455

economistic interpretation ofgrain crisis, 187

mechanization and, 429–31policy on, 110–11, 383

central role of state in, 526collectivization from above,

42, 523developing policy on,

420–22great change in, 46–78,

590–93new line, 413, 415–18Sixteenth Party Conference

and, 454–59qualitative aspects of, 472–74quantitative aspects of, 472rural cells of Party and, 165–66socialist ideas and, 519–20solving procurement problems

and, 126Stalin on, 382, 462, 464, 468–

70, 472technical superiority of, 398as voluntary act, 403, 418, 461

Comintern, 376, 379–80, 405–6,425, 426, 501, 535–36,561

Commercial units, number of,204

Commissariats, see entriesbeginning with term:People’s

Commission for settling labordisputes (RKK), 344

Commodity character of produc-tion and circulation, 210

Commodity exchange, develop-ment of, 29–30

Commodity productionof grain, in NEP period, 85reconstituting, 54

Commodity relations, 49between enterprises, and rela-

tions in production pro-cess, 266–67


Commodity relations (cont.)financial autonomy and, 269Party treatment of contradic-

tions in forms of, 529–34planning and, 288

Communist Manifesto (Marx andEngels), 552

Communist Saturdays, 252Competition, socialist emulation

as, 253-54“Concerning Questions of Agra-

rian Policy in theU.S.S.R.” (Stalin), 519

Congress of Soviets (1922), 274Congress of Soviets (1927), 249Consultative Council, 276Consumer goods

decline in investments in in-dustries producing, 387

industrial investment policyand, 390–91

production of, 29See also Agricultural

machineryContracts purchase, 148, 150Contribution to the Critique of

Political Economy(Marx), 510, 515

Control from below, 222–36,230–31

Control commissions (local Partyorgans), 440

in purge of Party, 443, 444rank-and-file, 436

Convention prices, 148, 149Cooperation, aid given to foster,

105–7Cooperative industry

evolution of, 199–203ownership of, 199

Cooperatives (and cooperativesocieties)

craftsmen in, 144credit, 63expulsion from, for failure to

meet grain require-ments, 124

NEP and, 24percent of peasants in (1927),

107socialism and entire peasantry

in, 24workers’, 312

Cost of living, grain prices affect-ing, 149

Council of Labor and Defence(CLD), 78, 268

Council of People’s Commissars(Sovnarkom), 234,452–53

Gosplan and, 78introduces financial autonomy,

268small-scale industry and, 201

Council of syndicates, 276Credit

agricultural tools and systemof, 102

banking system and, 64gold-backed currency and, 58policy on, and return to paper

currency, 60promoting state-sector ac-

cumulation through ex-pansion of, 156

See also LoansCultural revolution, 222, 227,

422Currency, 50

balanced budget and stabiliza-tion of, 62

confidence in, 68conversion of agricultural pro-

duce into, 140-42


depreciation of, 55–57and illusions of “war com-

munism,” 54-55inflation of, to promote state-

sector accumulation, 156issuing of, 63return to (1926) paper, 29, 54,

60–61under “war communism,” 53See also Monetary system; and

specific monetary units

Darwinism, 550Death rate, fall in (1924–1927),

32Declaration of the Eighty-three,

380Declaration of the Thirteen, 375,

376Democratic centralism, 356–58,

363–64, 370, 371, 378,476–77, 507

monolithic principle and,539–40

Democratic Centralism (group),443

Demonstrations, 344Deniken, A. I., 561Dialectical and Historical Mate-

rialism (Stalin), 509–10,513, 516, 538

Dialectical materialism, trans-formed, 536-–48

Dictatorship of proletariatbourgeoisie subordinated to,

318class struggle as leading to, 509and disappearance of pro-

letariat, 316–17and intensification of class

struggle (1929), 427–28NEP as form of, 22

Party as instrument of, 32, 543See also Bolshevik Party

peasant support to consolidate,103

monolithism and peasantopposition to, 541

percent of peasants in Partyand, 167

perfect unity weakening, 540planning under, 289–90

planning apparatus and, 50and question of the state,

524–25as dictatorship of the state,

544and relations of production, 266and rising wages, 314and socialization of produc-

tion, 210state capitalism under, 291state ownership under, 528worker-peasant alliance and,

42, 358See also Worker-peasant al-

lianceDiscipline

Party, 424See also Labor discipline

Distribution, planning and pro-cess of, 74

See also PlanningDivision of labor, and allocation

of capital, 75“Dizzy with Success” (Stalin),

468, 470, 472Doctors, increase in numbers of

(1913–1928), 321Dzerzhinsky, F., 219-20, 375,

386-87

Economic organs, decisive roleof, as illusion, 66


Economic organs (cont.)See also specific economic or-

gansEconomic planning, see Plan-

ningEconomic policy, NEP as, 24–30

See also New Economic PolicyEconomic relations, Party role

in transforming, 66Economist-technicist conception

of productive forces, 508–19quantity and, 533–34

Economy, see specific aspects ofeconomy

Education, student population,increase in, 31

EgalitarianismParty suspicious of, 179-80wage differentials and, 249–50

18th Brumaire, The (Marx), 527Eighth Congress of the Trade

Unions (1928), 233, 235,249–50, 344, 453

Eighth Komsomol Congress(1928), 223, 224, 249

Electrification, 62, 77, 201Eleventh Party Conference

(1921), 56Eleventh Party Congress (1922),

23, 35, 316–18, 332Elektrobank (bank financing

electrification), 63Elleinstein, J., 591Employment

percent increase in (1927), 391wages, profits and evolution of,

293–301See also Unemployment

Engels, Friedrich, 420, 514, 523,524, 551

Equipmentobsolete, 311–12

See also Agricultural machin-ery; Technology

Evolutionism, Marxism as,548–50

Exchangeanalyzing social conditions of,

136constraints on, 136–39effect of price policy on social

conditions of, 139–40evolution of, of agricultural

produce, 140–42foreign

and gold-backed currency,58

grain export for, 34participants forced into,

141–42town and country, during NEP

period, 29–30Exchange rate

currency stability and legal, 61maintaining rouble, gold

backed currency and, 58maintaining parity, 59–60

Exchange value, planning withmoney and predomi-nance of, over use value,433

Executive Committee of Comin-tern, 376, 379–80

Expertscurrency reform and (1924), 59economist-technicist concep-

tion of productiveforces, 508–19

quantity and, 533–34in new banking system, 63of Osvok, 80and Party suspicious of egali-

tarian notions, 180of planning organs, 78


See also Planning; and spe-cific planning organs

planning principle strengthen-ing, 532

role of, in Party ideology,555–58

technology and importance of,518, 519

training of, 226-28and working-class origins,

554–55Exploitation, 95, 99, 237–38,

288, 319, 377, 428–29Exports

gold-backed currency and pol-icy on, 58

grain, 111, 113–14, 205grain production fall and

(1929), 1101926–1928, 113, 114

Extractive industry, productionin, 29

Farms, see AgricultureFebruary 4, 1924, decree of,

57–58Feldman, G., 280Fideism, 510Fiduciary circulation, rise in

(1928–1930), 69Fifteenth Party Conference

(1926), 106, 220, 221,301, 376–78

Fifteenth Party Congress (1927),36, 39, 86–87, 103, 105,106, 144, 175, 176, 192,204, 213, 221–23, 226,301, 336, 374–76, 378–86, 391, 392

Fifth All-Union Congress ofSoviets, 448–52

Fifth Komsomol Conference, 249

Financial autonomy (businessaccounting; Khozras-chet), 267–841

development of, 268–76of enterprises, 242restricting effects of, 320and state planning, 277–83unemployment and, 294

Financial illusions, planningprinciple and, 532–33

Financial policy, and return topaper currency, 60

Financial system, weak degreecontrol of, 67–69

Fines for nondelivery of grain,124

First Five-Year Plan, 122, 235,241, 251–52, 254, 255,319–21, 383, 418, 566

collectivization and, 460and labor discipline, 453large-scale industry under, 447and machinery of state, 436resolution on, at Sixteenth

Party Conference,448–52

Fiscal revenue, centralizationof, 30

Food supply, 228effect of, on rupture of

worker-peasant alliance,42

after 1927, 113peasant consumption of

(1926–1927), 112Ford, Henry, 240Foreign concessions, 199–203Foreign exchange

and gold-backed currency, 58grain export for, 34

Foreign trade, see Exports; Im-ports


Fourteenth All-Russia Congressof Soviets (1929), 176

Fourteenth Congress of Soviets(1927), 175

Fourteenth Party Conference(1925),164, 169, 217,218, 243

Fourteenth Party Congress(1925), 243, 244, 302,333, 338, 365–76, 528,554

Fourth Congress of the Comin-tern (1922), 277

Fourth Congress of Soviets(1927), 296

Free market, 29, 473–4Frumkin, 399–400

Gastev, A., 239, 240General Secretary, see Stalin,

JosephGeneticist conception of de-

velopment, 279German Ideology, The (Marx),

514Gold roubles, calculations in (as

of March 1922), 56Gold standard

abandoned, 59–60, 68effects of adopting, 56-60political implications of aban-

doned, 60–61Goods famine, 68, 69, 152–53Goods-roubles, 55, 56Gorky, Maxim, 558–59, 561, 563,

564, 566Gosbank (state bank), 77, 78, 269,

274in banking system, 63and gold-backed currency, 58

and monetary reform, 56, 57,59–60

reopened, 55–56Goselro (State Commission for

the Electrification ofRussia), 77, 78

Gosplan, see State PlanningCommission

Gotha Program, 552GPU (State Political Administra-

tion), 466Grain

class differentiation of peas-antry and market supplyof, 88–89

prices of, stability as goal, 149supplying, to towns, 33total marketed, 1924–1925

compared with 1913Grain balance, problem of,

111–13Grain exports, see ExportsGrain harvest

collectivization and fall in (af-ter 1931), 111

fall in (1929), 1101925–1926, 951926–1927, 281926–1928, 37, 911927–1928, 93, 941931 estimate, 104

Grain procurement, 66agricultural policy and (1927–

1928), 101–7crisis in, 37–38, 42, 101–2, 110

basis of, 188chief effects of, and

emergency measures,109

class foundation of crisis(1927–1928), 91–94


economic imbalances andpolitical mistakes ex-plaining, 403

economistic interpretationof, 187

effect of pricing scissors, 153effects on class relations in

countryside, 114–15emergency measures, 38–42,

108as error of policy, 399as kulak strike, see Rich

peasantsrelations between classes

and, 431–33Stalin’s view of emergency

measures, 115–16and state of worker-peasant

alliance, 33–44fall in (1929), 123, 124and fall in production, 109–10gap in, and market prices for

grain, 149–50ideological conflict in Party

and, 386industrialization in conflict

with, 114lack of change in agricultural

policy and, 107–8and means of production,

94–991928–1929, 120–26resistance to measures of,

121–26and Right deviation (1929),

426–47and tempo of industrialization,

401tonnage of (1926–1927), 37

Grain productioncollectivization, 462

decline in (1928), and renewalof emergency measures,109–11

fall of, worker-peasant alliancerupture and, 42

in NEP period, 85price policy unfavorable to,

149, 151–52Grain reserves

exhaustion of, 110inadequate (1926–1928), 93, 94

Great Britain, 276Groman, V., 279Grosskopf, S., 88, 91, 157Group of 15, 378–79Grundrisse (Marx), 49, 290

Handicrafts, 143–45, 200–2Hero of Labor (decree July 27,

1927), 252History of the C.P.S.U.(B.), 523,

589“How to Organize Competi-

tion?” (Lenin), 253

Idealism, philosophical, 549, 550Imports of industrial goods,

113–14Incentives, material, 452–54Income

percentage increase in cash(1926–1927), 190

See also National incomeIncome distribution among

peasants, 112India, 380Industrial accidents, labor pro-

ductivity and, 243Industrial goods

agricultural surplus and de-mand for, 157–58


Industrial goods (cont.)gap between rural and urban

consumption of, 156–57grain crisis and available, 93supply of, to peasantry, 142–47

See also Agriculturalmachinery

unavailable to peasants, 95Industrial production

1921–1922 and 1926–1927,28–29

1925–1928, 1581926–1927, 200percent of, under state and

cooperative sector, 32planned increase in (1929–

1930), 458Industrial sector, capital alloca-

tion and state-owned, 75See also Investment

Industrial trustsorganization of, 271See also Financial autonomy

Industrializationto avoid capitalism, 366–67central role of state in, 526effect on, of introducing sys-

tem of financial au-tonomy, 273–74

gold standard and, 58–60ideological conception of, 520,

521importance of, 373–74inflation and, 194–95labor discipline and acceler-

ated, 234–37launching of, 113–14mechanization and, 431new line on (1928), 413–15and Party ideology, 357–58,

398–499, 507–8, 565–66

clashes in early 1928, 398403

contradiction between in-dustrial and agriculturalpolicy, and the greatchange, 457–60

deepening split in summer1928, 403–18

great change at end of 1929,460–78

open split, 418–33Sixteenth Party Conference,

433–57peasantry andemphasis on industrializa-

tion at expense of, 362,399–401, 409

great change and, 457–60resistance of peasantry and

accelerated, 122–23tribute to finance industry,

297, 401, 403, 421, 422,428–29, 477, 507, 592

See also Agriculture, policyon

planning and, 320See also Planning

policy on (1927), 382–83production conferences and,

218–23as solution to unemployment,

301See also Unemployment

Taylorism and socialist emula-tion, 237–57

trade union role in, 345united opposition and rapid,

374–82VSNKh role in, 77worker-peasant alliance and,

119–20


See also Worker-peasant al-liance

“Industrialization of the Countryand the Right Deviationin the C.P.S.U.(B)” (Sta-lin), 413

Industrycategories of price, wages, and

profit in, see Prices; Prof-its; Wages

contradiction between privateand state sectors in,197–208

evolution of, 199–203expenditures on (1923–1928),

62financial autonomy of, see Fi-

nancial autonomyforms and evolution of forms of

ownership in, 199–203growth of large-scale (1929–

1932), 447inflation and decrease of pro-

duction in, 193integrated in overall process of

reproduction of produc-tion conditions, 266–68

investment in, see Investmentmanagement forms in,210–13

See also ManagementNEP in conflict with planning

in, 206–7ownership of, 199percent of value of production

by large-scale (1926–1927), 209

private and rural handicrafts,143–45

selling price and cost of pro-duction in, 189–92

small-scale industry vs. state,202

wages and productivity oflabor in, 192–93

Inflation1922, 551925–1927, 631926–1929, 388–89origins of process of, 193–95

Instruments of production, 513,516

See also Means of productionIntellectuals

alliance of workers and, andrallying of old intel-ligentsia, 561–65

new intelligentsia, 565–66Investment

changes in financial autonomyand nature of, 280industrial, 388, 407–11

maximum, as policy, 413–15,417–18, 420, 422–23

1927 and 1929, 447plans for (1926–1927 on),

386-88total (1926), 387

job creation and, 296, 297origins of inflation in, 193–94overall plan of, 320profitability and, 305, 313–14

See also Profitsprograms of, 30n reconstruction period, 556

Izvestiya (magazine), 366

June 8, 1927, decree of, 78–79Juridical forms of ownership,

production relationsand, 527–29


Juridico-political interventions,planning as, 73

Kaganovich, L. M., 120, 235–36,362, 375, 402

Kalashnikov, 181–82Kalinin, M. I., 172, 365, 372, 382Kamenev, L. B., 64, 88–89, 96,

369and new line (1928–1929), 421,

424policy criticisms by (1925),

370, 372policy on recruitment to Party

and, 553and Right deviation, 412Trotsky attacked by, 364–65in united opposition, 374–82

Kerzhentsev, 240Kezelev, 454Khozraschet, see Financial au-

tonomyKirov, S. M., 295, 372, 375Kolchak, 561Kolkhoz system, 108, 111, 461–

62, 464entry of peasants into, 42in NEP period, 85See also Collectivization

Komnezamy (poor peasants’committees), 100, 124

Komsomol, 251, 252Komsomolskaya Pravda (news-

paper), 454Kravel, I., 453Kronstadt rebellion, 346, 541Krupskaya, Nadezhda, 370, 377,

420–21, 459Krzhizhanovsky, G. M., 64, 78Kuibyshev, V. V., 59, 65, 214,

232, 235, 312, 389

line supported by, 392and new line (1928), 398,

407–8on NOT, 557on plans, 280and unrealism of plans, 451

Kulak threat (1928–1929), 102Kulaki, see Rich peasantsKulaks’ strike, 88–90, 96, 101Kuomintang, 379

Labor Code, 299Labor discipline, 213–15, 220,

221, 229and forecasts of plan (to 1932),

452–54imposed from above, 234–37piece work and, 244predominant form of, 314–15Stalin on (1928), 231and unemployment, 312–13

Labor disputessettling, 344See also Collective agreements

Labor exchange statistics,294– 95

Labor exchanges, 298, 299, 453Labor force, and illusions of “war

communism” period,267-68

Labor market, regulating, 298,299

Labor productivity, 221and discipline, 453, 454piece wages to increase,

242–43and plan forecasts, 451-52planned increase in (to 1932),

449planning organs and, 246–47


shorter work day and, 228socialist emulation and,

251–57wages and, 192–93, 213, 390

See also Wagestrade union role in, 343, 345work norms and need to raise,

214Labor time, immediate, 49Land

area under cultivation, 462collective forms of cultiva-

tion, 100–1, 455sowable (1924–1925), 97

changes in possession and dis-tribution of (1928), 118

division of, among families,180

land shortage, 296, 297, 300–1rural overpopulation and

colonization of new,296, 297

leasing of, 96–97extending rights, 368, 369right to lease, 154, 155

nationalization of, 87, 95Land associations, small-scale

industry under, 201Land community, 174–76Lapidus, I., 212, 241, 274, 286

88, 292, 302, 307, 315Larin, Yuri, 144, 369Lashevich, M., 375Lassalle, F., 22, 551Lassallism, 503“‘Law of Primitive Socialist Ac-

cumulation,’ or Why WeShould Not ReplaceLenin by Preob-razhensky” (Bukharin),374

League of Time (organization),240

Left opposition, polarization inagriculture, theses of,86–87

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 57, 361,459

appeal to authority of, 235and bourgeois labor parties,

331and bureaucratization, 303,

424cooperation as form leading to

socialist organization ofproduction in view of,105–6

and development of revolu-tionary ideas by masses,522

on dialectics, 537, 538on dictatorship of proletariat,

22–23and disappearance of prole-

tariat, 316on economic development,

277, 278on economics turning into

politics, 109on financial autonomy, 271–72,

274Great-Russian chauvinism

and, 566internal contradictions in de-

velopment as viewedby, 509–10

and large-scale industry, 202Marxism and

on Marx’s theory, 22, 502on Marxism, 505struggles to transform Marx-ism, 503–4


Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich (cont.)need to return to principles of

Commune, 526NEP and, 49, 99, 153

and NEP as worker-peasantalliance, 22–24

as road to socialism, 66on small–scale industry,

200–1, 555and one–man management,

211, 288Party and

on class base of Party, 540Party function and, 356on Party membership, 332–

33, 336, 341and transformation of, 331,

332union between Party and

theory in view of, 546peasantry and

on abuse of middle peasants,125

on aid to peasants, 98–99and classification of farms,

87collective farming and, 420,

422collectivization and, 470organizing peasants within

framework of NEP, 99on peasant opposition

(1920), 541peasant soviets and, 380on productivity of small

peasants, 137supplying peasants with

means of production inview of, 430

plans andplanning organs as important

to, 73

on plans, 206–7on preparing plans, 448–49

and priority development ofindustries producingmeans of production,414

on relation between cultureand class origin, 554–55

and revolutions in the East,404

and role of trade unions,215–16

and socialist technique, 315on soviets, 543and Stalin’s resignation, 364

state and, 523, 524and destruction of state

machinery, 368on role of state economic or-

gans, 35on Soviet state, 429and state enterprise, 249on state machine, 436and state ownership, 210

on surpassing advanced coun–tries, 415

on Taylorism, 238–39technology and, 312, 417use of quotes from, 370, 371,

477work norms and, 253and worker–peasant alliance,

119, 420, 562“Lenin and the Building of Col–

lective Farms”(Krupskaya), 420

Lenin enrollments, 332Leninism (Zinoviev), 370Lessons of October, The

(Trotsky), 364“Letter to the Congress” (Lenin),

364, 540


Linhart, R., 67Livestock, 42

reduction in number of, 117Loans

constraints to pay, 137financial autonomy and, 269,

280to peasants, 107sought by state, in rural areas,

58Local trusts, see Financial au-

tonomyLysenko, T. D., 547

Machinerywage differentials and, 250–51See also Agricultural machin-

ery; TechnologyManagement

challenge to existing forms of,226–28

class struggle and role of,215–17

of collective farms, 473control of, from below, 222–26,

230–31favoring freedom to hire, 299and financial autonomy, 267,

268See also Financial autonomy

financial proposals of (1921),56

hostile to workers’ coopera-tives and local industry,312

intelligentsia in, 564, 565labor discipline and, 234–37and new line (1928), 417one–man, reaffirming, 236, 246

Lenin and, 211, 288piece work, wage norms and,

213–14, 241–47

power and relative autonomyof, 387

pressure by (1926–1928), forindustrialization, 391

role of, in accelerated indus-trialization (to 1932),452–53

See also Industrializationproduction conferences op-

posed by, 217–22in Shakhty affair, 223–24socialist emulation and,

251–57in state factories, 210–13strengthening of, 310Taylorism and, 238, 239three-shift work and, 228–39wages of managers, 249work norms revised by, 243worker criticism and, 33,

228–34See also Administrative ap-

paratus; ExpertsManifesto of the Communist

Party, 515, 527Manufacturing industry, produc-

tion in, 29Mao Tse-tung, 316, 536Marketing

of agricultural produce,1923–1924 comparedwith prewar, 140–41

of grain, surplus (reserve) and,93

grain procurement as form of,34

Marx, Karl, 408on bureaucracy, 525on changing labor relations,

452commodity and money rela-

tions in view of, 531


Marx, Karl (cont.)and equal rights, 180on evolutionist interpretation

of his theory, 548–50on his not being a Marxist, 503ideological changes in view of,

521–23on intensification of labor,

237–38and labor vouchers, 60Lenin on theory of, 22, 502

See also Lenin, VladimirIlyich

on money, 54and ouvriérisme, 551–52on political economy, 505on political role of producer,

318on productive power, 49relations analyzed by, 67role of state ownership in view

of, 527on social production process,

289–92state as viewed by, 523–26

Marxism, 501–8, 593–94Stalin’s departure from, 510,

511, 513–17tendency to identify Party

with, 546–47tendency to reduce, to a form

of evolutionism, 548–50worker-peasant alliance and,

22See also Bolshevik Party

Marxism-Leninism, 506, 535as theoretical basis of Bol-

shevism, 501Mass movement

ebbing of, 233–34rise of (1928), 228–33

Means of productionagricultural policy and, 102changing forms of separation of

working class from, 317expansion of industry produc-

ing, 413–15financial autonomy and separa-tion of workers from,

269growth in value of, 306–7joint utilization of, 99for peasants, 429, 430

struggle to acquire, 94–99underestimation of poor and

middle peasant farms,103–5

See also Agriculturalmachinery

value from, wage relations and,291

Mental-manual work, separationbetween, 565

Middle peasants (serednyaki ), 33in collectives, 461–62

See also Collectivizationdeterioration of overall situa-

tion of (1928), 116–20and differentiation of peas-

antry, 86–87effects of taxes in favor of,

389–90exchange relations for, in NEP

period, 136–37forms of struggle of, 94–101and goal of NEP, 189in grain crisis, 93–94

agricultural policy and,101–7

grain requisitioned from,39–41

grain sales by, 88


increase in proportion of, 86and Party, 337, 359as percent of peasant popula-

tion, 88pressure on, as inadmissible,

402productivity of, 455–56resistance of, (1929), 121–26and role of kulaks, 90, 359underestimation of farms, of,

103–5Mikhailovsky, N., 548–49Mikoyan, A., 39, 65, 375Mir (village), 87, 101

associated ideas of farm inde-pendence and solidaritywithin, 180–81

idea of autonomy of, 176–78idea of equality within, 178–80in peasant ideology, 174–78small–scale industry under,

201Mode of production, as principal

form of social develop-ment, 512

Molotov, V., 99, 103, 105, 106,218, 372, 553

on kulak question, 466line supported by, 392and new line (1928), 398, 402,

434and united opposition, 377

Monetary system, 53–72class consequences of 1924 es-

tablishment of, 58–59post-1925 changes in, 59–60process of reconstituting,

54–57reform of, 57–61weak degree of control of,

67–69

See also Currency; Goldstandard

Money relations, 49, 269, 531–34Monolithic principle in Party,

539–42Municipal enterprises bank

(Tsekombank), 63Myasnikov supporters, 443

Na Agrarnom Fronte (journal),467, 468

Narkomfin, see People’s Com-missariat of Finance

Narkomtorg (People's Commis-sariat of Trade), 39, 113,210

National incomeagricultural tools as percent of

(1926–1927), 102increase of (1926–1927), 388percent of, under state and

cooperative sector, 32rate of increasing (1925–1929),

193Nationalism, 552, 566NEP, see New Economic PolicyNew Economic Policy (NEP)

abandonment of, 21, 43–44, 69,108

emergency measures and,110

factors determining (from1926), 205–7

final crisis of, 589–90planning and, 80–81

concepts of, 66–67financial autonomy under,

272–73an immediate purpose of, 189Party and, see Bolshevik Partypeasant demands in, 53


New Economic Policy (cont.)as policy of alliance between

peasants and workers,21–21

political interventions in, 74VSNKh role in, 77

See also Supreme Council ofthe National Economy

New Economics, The (Preobra–zhensky), 307, 374, 532

Ninth Party Congress (1920), 77NOT (Nauchnaya Organizatsiya

Truda), 239, 240, 557“Notes of an Economist” (Bukha–

rin), 407, 408, 411, 425

“October and Comrade Trotsky’sTheory of PermanentRevolution” (Stalin),366

October enrollments, 332, 334Oganovsky, N. P., 104OGPU (Unified State Political

Administration), 376“On the Ideological Front”

(Pletnev), 554Opinions, purge of, 443–44Ordzhonikidze, S., 365, 375Organization, fight for, 537–38Osinsky, V. V., 362, 402Ostrovityanov, K., 212, 241, 244,

286–88, 292, 302, 307,315

Osvok (special commission forthe restoration of fixedcapital), 79–81,104

Outline of Political Economy(Lapidus and Os-trovityanov), 212, 241,286–89, 292–93, 307,315

Ouvriérisme, 551–53, 562–63

Paris Commune, 524–26Patriarchal family, 180Peasant assemblies (skhod), 90,

118grain procurement and (1929),

123and idea of equality within the

mir, 178in peasant ideology, 174–76struggle for socialist forms of

labor within, 180“Peasant Question in France and

Germany” (Engels), 420Peasant revolts

1920–1921, 5411929, 126

Peasantryin barter system, 53–54and Bolshevik Party, 358–59

aid given to cooperative andcollective farming by,106

distrust and disdain byParty, 121, 558–61

division in Party and possi-ble resistance of, 435

monetary system and rela-tions between state andpeasantry, 61

peasant ideology and, 173,178–82

percent of peasants in(1927–1929), 165

recruitment, 554and resistance of peasants to

coercive measures,121–26

relations of exteriority, 517weakness among peasants,

107–8, 113–16, 163–67as class, 552class differentiation of, and


grain supply to the mar–ket, 88–89

contradictions in ideology of,173–83

currency, state, and, 61discouraged from seeking

work in towns, 298–99effects of financial autonomy

system on, 278effects of planning on, 80and end of “war communism,”

53exchange relations for, in NEP

period, 136–39financial resources drawn

from, 272–73See also Industrialization

in goods famine, 68, 69Lenin and, see Lenin, Vladimir

Ilyichmir in ideology of, 174–78

See also: Mirmonetary reform favored by,

58overall view of (1928), 116–21penetration of socialist ideas

among, 519–21polarization in, 86–87problems in accumulation and

evolution of consump-tion by, 153–58

social differentiation of, inNEP period, 95–91

statistics illustrating differ-entiation of (1927),87–88

supply of industrial goods to,see Agriculturalmachinery; Industrialgoods

in system of financial au-tonomy, 275

unemployment and rural over-population, 296

See also Agriculture; Middlepeasants; Poor peasants;Rich peasants; Worker-peasant alliance

Penal CodeArticle 61, 124–25Article 107, 38

People’s Commissariat of Ag-riculture, 300

People’s Commissariat of Fi-nance (Narkomfin), 54,55, 77, 78, 274

and changes in peasantry, 86Gosbank and, 56monetary reform (1924) and,

59–60and new banking system, 63

People’s Commissariat of Labor,246

People’s Commissariat of Trade(Narkomtorg), 39, 113,210

Permanent revolution, 366–67Peter the Great (Czar of Russia),

415Petrovsky, G. Y., 564Petty bourgeoisie, 202–3

bourgeoisie vs. (1926), 206in Party membership, 333, 336,

341–42Philosophical Notebooks (Le-

nin), 537Piece wages (and piece work),

213, 241–47Planning

capitalist relations and, 73,288–90, 529–34

commerce subordinated to ob-jectives of, 37, 38

credit and, 64–65


Planning (cont.)development of, 73–81and direct relations of produc-

tion, 266establishment of organs of, 50extension of, 319–21financial autonomy in system

of, 276–83grain procurement

as a basis for, 34shortfall in procurement, 37

and increase in planning or-gans, 191–92

increasing role of, 30industrial investment (1926–

1927 on), 386–88See also Investment

NEP conflict with, 206–7organs favoring big enter-

prises, 313piece work and, 245, 246plan counterposed to market,

529–34prices and, 148, 149

See also PricesSixteenth Conference and in-

dustrial, 446–54trade union role in, 343wages, productivity and,

246–47Platform of the 4, 370Platform of the 46, 362–64Pletnev, 554Political Bureau, 244, 355

authority shifted out of, 400,459

clash within (1928), 398–402,412

kulak question in, 466membership of (1926), 372and new line (1928–1929),

421–27, 434–35

and platform of the 46, 362Trotsky and, 365, 376Zinoviev removed from, 375

Poor peasants (bednyaki), 33in collectives, 461–62

See also Collectivizationand differentiation of peas–

antry, 86–87effects of taxes in favor of,

389–90exchange relations for, in NEP

period, 136–37forms of struggle of, in NEP

period, 94–101and goal of NEP, 189in grain procurement crisis,

92–94grain requisitioned from, 39, 41grain sales by, 88Party implantation among, 337as percent of peasant popula-

tion, 88productivity of, 455–56reduction in proportion of, 86and role of kulaks, 90underestimation of farms of,

103–5Poor peasant’ committees

(Komnezamy; KNS),100, 124

Population growth, 1913–1926,29

Postyshev, P. P., 420Positivism, 550Poverty of Philosophy, The

(Marx), 514Pravda (newspaper), 120, 124,

253, 366, 379, 406, 407,420, 424–46, 454, 459,468

Preobrazhensky, E., 89, 97, 156–58, 362, 367, 401, 507


economic views of, 307, 374,532

on exploiting pre-socialistforms of economy, 377

law of value contrasted withplanning principle by,531, 532

Pricesin Bolshevik ideology, 505class effect of policy on,

139–40commodity relations, 529–34conditions governing pur-

chase, for agriculturalproduce, 147–53

and consolidation of worker–peasant alliance, 65

control of trade and, 203, 204economic problems resolved

by, 65–66effect on, of private sector

competition with stateand cooperative agen–cies, 36

financial autonomy and, 271,274

grain procurement agenciesand price policy, 34

See also Exportshigh industrial, low agricul–

tural, 89, 97, 135cost of wages and, 192policy on (1927), 385retail prices (1928–1929),

190rise in agricultural produce

(1926–1929), 389scissors problem, 150–53,

189, 190, 390ideological conception of role,

285–93increases in (1923–1927), 30

loss of control over system of,69

movement of (1924–1929), 68and ownership of industry,

199, 200policy on, to improve peasantliving standard, 389policy on, set at end of 1927,

36–37regulation of, 282resolution on (1927), 383–84retail, of industrial goods

(1928–1929), 190selling, and cost of production

in industry, 189–92state industry and, 199supply and demand and, 29and working class hostility to-

ward “Nepmen,” 205Primitive accumulation, see Ac-

cumulationPrivate sector

in agriculture, 32contradiction between state

and, in trade and indus-try, 197–208

elimination of, 206, 321See also Rich peasants

evolution of, 199–203grain in (1929), 110grain procurement by, in NEP

period, 34, 35ownership of, 199peasant nondelivery of grain

and recourse to, 124percent of wholesale and retail

trade in (1926–1927),203

proletarian discontent andreappearance of, 338

restoration of limited, 50retail trade in, 36


Private sector (cont.)rise in prices in (1927–1929),

68wholesale trade in, 35

Problems of Leninism (Stalin),544–45

Processing industry, productionin (1927–1929), 28–29

Production, planning function in,73

See also PlanningProduction conferences (meet-

ings), 217–22, 233Party inability to help, 518and Party members, 340

Production costsplanned fall in (to 1932), 449unemployment and, 294

Production relationsin agriculture, 135–62capitalist character of, 266–67class struggle and struggle to

transform, 215–34commodity relations and,

266–67and juridical forms of owner-

ship, 527–29Production targets, socialist emu-

lation and, 254, 255Productive forces

development of, 314–19,509–13

economist–technicist concep-tion of, technology and,508–19

social development as effect ofdevelopment, 513–17

as source of development ofsociety, 512

Productivityfarm, 455–56See also Labor productivity

Profitsin Bolshevik ideology, 505and evolution of employment

and unemployment,293–301

as goal, financial autonomyand, 270, 272, 274,277–82

ideological conception of roleof, 285–93

ideological conception of sig-nificance of, by state en-terprises, 292–93

investments and, 305net industrial (1924–1927), 194obsolete equipment and,

305–6, 311in private sector, 198unemployment and, 312–13

ProletariatBolshevik Party as vanguard

of, 331See also Bolshevik Party

bourgeoisie and, in NEPperiod, 32, 33, 205–6

characteristics of, 551, 552coercion and development of,

211disappearance of, 316–17increase of Soviet, 594and polarization in agriculture,

86–87poor peasants entering, 86reproduction process and

weakness of, 315–16rising wages and lowered liv-

ing standard of, 314See also Wages

and surplus value, 288tendency to identify Party with

state and, 543–46wages and “real,” 250


weakening of, 309–10See also Dictatorship of pro-

letariat; Worker-peasantalliance; Working class

Proletkult (group), 239, 240, 510,554, 557

Prombank (bank for industry), 63Public health, 32

health of Party activists, 340Public libraries, books in (1913

and 1927), 31Public works, unemployment

and, 300Pugachev, 559Punishment for nonfulfillment of

grain quotas, 124–36Purchasing power, 55Purges

need for, and effects of Party,439–45

of rural cells, 165–67Pyatakov, P. I., 80, 362

Rabkrin, 86, 97Railroads, increasing tonnage

carried by, 30Rationalization of production,

252–53Razin, Stephan, 559Reading, teaching, to the masses,

31Reality, identification of theory

with, 547–48Red Banner of Labor (Sept.

1928), 253Religious ideas, peasant, 173–74Repression and principle of un-

ity, 547Republican trusts, 271

See also Financial autonomyRequisitioning, end of, 53–54

Revolution, from above, idea of,523–27, 550, 560, 592

Revolutionary Marxism, see Bol-shevik Party

Rich peasants (kulaki), 33benefit from gold-backed cur-

rency, 58curbing, 384and differentiation of peas-

antry, 86–87dominate peasant assemblies,

175eliminating, as a class, 464–72,

591encouraged to prosper, 155–

56, 368–69exchange relations for, in NEP

period, 137and goal of NEP, 189and grain crisis, 38, 39, 41, 94,

115, 187, 399agricultural policy and,

101–7and economic strengthening

of, 431–32first phase of grain procure-

ment and sales by, 91–92kulaks’ strike, 88–90, 96, 101

heading the mir, 179increasing influence of, 86,

108, 120, 338, 359, 418,431–32, 591

independence from, of poorand middle peasants,99–101

means of production and,94–99

in peasant assemblies, 177as percent of peasant popula-

tion, 88purchase prices of technical

crops benefiting, 148


Rich peasants (cont.)restricting tendencies of, 382,

402, 456, 590Right deviation and, 119, 424role of, in exchange, 142in rural assemblies, 170–72,

179in rural cells of Party, 166social and political role of,

89–91weakened middle peasants

aiding, 118See also Collectivization

Right opposition, see Bukharin,N.

“Role and Functions of theTrade Unions, The”(Lenin), 215

Roubleproblems of integrating in

European financial sys-tem, 67–68

See also CurrencyRKK (commission for settling

labor disputes), 344Rudzutak, Y. E., 375Ruling power

planning and class characterof, 75

See also Bolshevik PartyRural bourgeoisie

polarization in agriculture and,86–87

See also Rich peasantsRural cells (of Party), 165–67,

172Rural industry, 312, 378, 388, 555Rural overpopulation, 296Rural soviets, 124, 167–73

and agrarian policy, 456funds available to (1927), 175

Party preference for workingwith, 179

skhod and, 175–77skhod, mir and, 174–76small–scale industry under, 201

Russian Peasant, The (Gorky),558, 562

Rykov, A. I., 382clashes with (early 1928), 398line supported by, 392and new line (1928–1929), 402,

407, 412, 421–23, 425–27, 434

Sales syndicates, 209, 275–76, 281Sapronov, T. V., 362Savings banks, 63Schlichter, 296Second Comintern Congress, 87Second International, 501, 550Secrecy of economic decisions, 66Secretariat, 40, 355, 459Serednyaki, see Middle peasantsSettlement notes (svoznaks), 55Seventh Congress of Komsomol

(1926), 249Seventh Congress of the Trade

Unions (1926), 213–14,221, 249, 250

Shapiro, D., 200Shock–brigades, 252, 253Shockworkers, 252Short–term loans, 56Shvernik, N. M., 345Sixteenth Party Conference

(1929), 121–22, 165, 235,241, 422, 433–57, 523

Sixth Congress of the Comintern(1928), 297, 404–6

Sixth Trades Union Congress(1924), 217


Sknod, see Peasant assembliesSmall–scale industry, 200–2, 555Social classes, 22–23, 73, 552Social democratic parties, 404,

405Social development, dominant

Bolshevik view of,509–17

appraised, 513–17Social position criterion, 334–35Social relations, absence of

dialectical analysis ofsystem of, 302–6

effects, 305–6Socialism

NEP as possible road to, 25–26in one country, 367

worker-peasant alliance and,366–68

Socialist character of planning,289–90

Socialist emulation, 230, 237–57,453

Sokolnikov, G. Y., 59, 274, 370,424

Soviet government, see State, theSoviet school, transformation of,

181–83Soviet trusts (state trusts),

268–69See also Financial autonomy

Soviet unions (state unions or en-terprises), 268–69

See also Financial autonomySoviets

Lenin on, 543Party and, see Bolshevik Partyworking class and activity of,

346–49See also Rural soviets; Urban

sovietsSovkhozes, 85

See also CollectivizationSovnarkom, see Council of

People’s CommissarsSpecial commission for the res-

toration of fixed capital(Osvok), 79–81, 104

Speculation, grain procurementcrisis and, 38, 39, 41

Stalin, Joseph, 89, 112, 297and Chinese revolution, 379,

380on development of industry

(1925), 373in grain procurement crisis, 40

view of application ofemergency measures,115–16

on issue of worker–peasant al-liance, 366–68

and linearity of history, 550on need for criticism, 222–23and new line (1928–1929), 392,

398–407, 421, 425–33,447

offers resignation, 364Party and, 119, 164–65, 226–27,

336, 338, 365, 375, 377–78, 380–81, 509–17, 539,544–45, 558

and peasantry, 118, 167–71,382, 462, 463, 468–70,472, 519, 520, 560–61

permanent revolutioncriticized by, 366

principle of totality affirmedby, 536–37

on religious ideas, 174socialism in one country in

view of, 367socialist character of state en-

terprises as viewed by,302–3


Stalin, Joseph (cont.)on socialist emulation, 253,

255, 256state capitalism as viewed by,

371–72state ownership and, 528view of world situation by

(1928), 404–5and workers, 192, 218–19, 222,

224–26, 230–31, 438State, the

capital accumulation and, 76and collective forms of peasant

organization, 101and function of Gosplan,

77–78Lenin and, see Lenin, Vladimir

IlyichParty conception of role of,

523–27policy error toward peasants,

grain and, 96industrial goods for peasants

and, 98–99state framework for activity of

working class, 552tendency to identify Party with

proletariat, 543–46State bank, see GosbankState capitalism, 210–12, 291,

293, 303, 370–72State commercial organs, 144,

145State Commission for the Elec-

trification of Russia(Goselro), 77, 78

State and cooperative organsin grain procurement crisis,

92–93sale of industrial goods by, 209trade controlled by, 203–4

State farms in NEP period, 85State industry, see IndustryState ownership, 209–65, 527–29State Planning Commission

(Gosplan), 64, 243, 362,447, 529

formed, 76function of, 77–79and grain procurement crisis,

93monetary illusion of, 533Osvok and, 80and Sixteenth Party Confer-

ence, 448State Political Administration(GUP), 466State and Revolution, The

(Lenin), 523, 524State sector, 32, 197–265Stockbreeding, 42Strikes, 243, 344–45, 370, 541

Apr.–June 1928, 2291926–1928, 344piece work and, 243, 244

Strong, Anna Louise, 467Strumilin, S. G., 87, 88, 280, 296,

389, 451Subsistence farming, 140Surplus labor, 49Surplus value, 288, 293, 319Supreme Council of the National

Economy (VSNKh), 209,213, 221, 268, 276, 375,385, 411

financial autonomy and, 274,279

function of, 76, 77Gosplan and, 78industrial plan (1928) and, 407industrial trusts subordinate

to, 271


large–scale industry plans and,447

and new line (1928), 417Osvok and, 79–81, 104piece work and, 245, 246procedure for drawing up theplan, 281production conferences and,

219–20in scheme of financial au–tonomy, 269socialist emulation and, 251three–shift work and, 228workers criticized by, 230worker criticism and, 232

Syrtsov, S. I., 121

Tardiness, see Labor disciplineTax–in–kind, replacing requi-

sitioning, 53–54Taxes

coercion to collect (from 1928),138–39

hard, 124–25individual, 117, 118by land community, 175of poor and middle peasants

abatement of, 87constraints to pay, 137effects of, in favor of, 389–90

reduced agricultural, 93, 369and reintroduction of money,

54Taylor, 238Taylorism, 237–57Technicians, see Experts; Man-

agementTechnology, 312, 517–19

economist–technicist concep-tion of productive forcesand primacy of, 508–19

increasing role ascribed to,477

and industrial development,414–15

labor discipline and type ofdevelopment in, 314–15Marx on, 515, 516planning and development of,

75and reconstruction of agricul-

ture, 415–18, 429–31role of, in Party ideology,

555–58social relations changed

through, 553See also Agricultural machin-ery

Teleological conception of eco-nomic development,279–80

Third Congress of Soviets, 564Third International, see Comin-

ternThirteenth Party Conference

(1924), 57, 215, 217, 363,364

Thirteenth Party Congress(1924), 106, 204, 542,553, 562–63

Time–and–motion study, 214Tomsky, M. P., 218, 235–36, 249,

345, 372line supported by, 392and new line (1928–1929), 398,

402, 407, 412, 421, 423,425–27, 453

and wage differentials, 250Totality, principle of, 536,

538–42Towns

disturbance of relations be-


Towns (cont.)tween country and, 41,110–13

See also Grain procurementGorky on townsmen, 558–59new forms of bonds between

country and, 429–30in peasant ideology, 174,

177–78peasant mistrust of, 167

poor and middle peasants pro-visioning, 88, 89

priority give to, in consumergoods, 391

procurement crisis as crisis ofrelations between coun-ry and, 188

Tradecontradiction between private

and state sectors in,197–208

disadvantageous terms of, foragriculture, 74

1923–1924 and 1924–1927turnover, 30

ownership in sphere of, 203–5percent of turnover, under

state and cooperativesectors, 32

retail, in industrial goods inrural areas, 145–47

retail, state and cooperativeagencies in, 36

state and cooperative, 35–37wholesale, concentrated in

state and cooperativesector, 35–36

See also Exports; ImportsTrade unions, 202

broadening mass base of, andindependence of,342–46

cadres of, 343class struggle and role of,

215–17collective agreements with,

242discouraging peasants comingto towns for work,

298–99in financial autonomy system,

271and labor discipline, 235noninterference by, in man–

agement, 234piece wages and, 243piece work and, 245, 246power over organization of

labor taken from, 557in production conferences,

217–22question of, at Fourteenth

Party Conference,372–74

role of, in industrialization(1929–1932), 452–54

socialist emulation and, 254in strikes, 344–45and three–shift work, 229wage differentials and, 249–50of Western countries, 404, 405and work norms, 213–14, 245,

246, 343, 344Trades Union Council, 254Trotsky, Leon, 46, 363–67, 372,

374–82, 421, 435, 553Trotsky Archives, 412Trotskyism, 157, 365, 377, 407–9,

412, 435, 443–44, 454,507

Trotskyist–Zinovievist opposi-tion, 90

Tsekombank (municipal enter-prises bank), 63


Twelfth Party Conference(1922), 105

Twelfth Party Congress (1923),288, 543

Ulyanova, Maria, 459Unemployment, 293–306, 311–

14, 449Unified State Political Adminis-

tration (OGPU), 376United opposition, 374–82United States, 276Unity, primacy of, over contra-

diction, 543–47Unity of opposites, 537Urban soviets, 201, 347–48Use value, 267–68, 307, 433

Value, 49in Bolshevik ideology, 505crop, paid in relation to farm

implements and ani-mals, 98

exchange, 433law of, contrasted with plan

ning principle, 531–32price, wages and, 286, 290–91relating to wages, 242transfer of, to industry, 74use, 267–68, 307, 433

Varga, Eugene, 297Village, see: MirVoluntarist illusions, 389,

526–27Voroshilov, K. Y., 365, 372VSNKh, see Supreme Council of

the National EconomyVTsIK (All-Union Central

Executive Committee),347–48, 355

Wagesin Bolshevik ideology, 505

commodity relations and,529–34

contradictions in policy on,390–92

and evolution of employmentand unemployment, 293–301in financial autonomy system,

272grain prices affecting real, 149ideological conception of role

of, 285–93increasing, 193, 213, 243–44industrialization and lowering

of real, 235labor productivity and, 192–

93level of, unemployment and,

313–14piece, 241–47planned rise in (to 1932), 449shortened work day and same,

228sliding scale of, 55splits in working groups and in

equality of, 247–51work norms and raised, 243See also Collective agreements

Work dayshortened, 228three–shift, 228–29

Work norms, 235, 241–47CLI and, 241fixed from above, 213–15, 228socialist emulation and, 254–56trade union role in, 213–14, 245

246, 343, 344Worker-peasant alliance, 361–97

collectivization and, 126, 468,472

See also Collectivizationcontradictory forms of, 30–33


Worker-peasant alliance (cont.)cost of wages of workers and,

192distrust of peasantry and,

558–61effect on, of retreat from NEP in

trade and industry, 205effect of monopolistic compe-

tition on, 276emergency measures and, 108exchange conditions influence

on, 136financial autonomy and, 278and forecasts of plans (to 1932),

450, 451and grain crisis, 33–34, 114,

116, 188See also Grain procurement

growing deterioration of (1929),458

and imperialist attack on SovietUnion, 419–20

and industrialization at expenseof peasantry, 408

and means of production, 98–99NEP as policy of, 21–27, 1891923–1924, 361–641924–1925, 364–741925–1927, 374–92and Party, 24, 31, 32, 119, 164,

357, 358, 456, 507price stability and, 149and resistance of peasants

(1929), 122scissors effect of price policy

on, 150–51as tactical rather than strategic

necessity, 560weakened (1939s [sic-1930s]), 594

Workers’ control, 221Working class

mass movement (1928)ebbing, 233–34rise of, 228–33

and Marxism, 501–8organizational forms of,

330–54Party and, relations of exterior-

ity, 517See also Bolshevik Party

in private industry, 200role of, in economic develop-

ment toward socialism,66

role of, in management,216–22

socialist ideas among, technol–ogy and, 520, 521

soviets and, see SovietsWorld market, gold standard and,

58–59

Yakovtsevsky, 590Yaroslavsky, Y. M., 440, 444“Year of Great Change, A” (Sta–

lin), 462

Zasulich, Vera, 549Zinoviev, G., 364

policy criticisms by (1925),369–72

policy on recruitment to Partyand, 553

rallying intelligentsia, 563–64on the state, 544Trotsky and, 364in united opposition, 374–82

(continued from front flap)

producers to that of socially consciousmembers of society. Lenin's view of theNew Economic Policy was in terms of thesecond course, but the party did notdevelop the NEP as Lenin wished. Adiscussion of how and where the partywent wrong after Lenin's death is at theheart of this volume. It is also at the heartof all subsequent political and socialdevelopments in the USSR.

Charles Bettelheim was born inNovember 1913 in Paris. He has beenDirector of Studies of the Ecole Pratiquedes Hautes Etudes since 1948 andprofessor at the Institut d'Etude duDéveloppement Economique et Socialsince 1958. He is also director of theCentre d'Etudes de Planification Socialisteand of the journal Problèmes dePlanification. He worked in the SovietUnion in 1936 and has visited many timessince. He has traveled to study andattend conferences in Czechoslovakia,Poland, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia,Albania, Germany, Israel, Mexico,Vietnam, the United States, Canada, andall over Western Europe. He has alsovisited the People's Republic of Chinanumerous times. He has acted astechnical advisor or economic counselorin India, Cambodia, Algeria, Guinea, Mali,Egypt, and Cuba. He is the author ofnumerous articles and books, includingIndia Independent, Cultural Revolutionand Industrial Organization in China,Economic Calculation and Forms ofProperty, and On the Transition toSocialism (with Paul M. Sweezy), allpublished by Monthly Review Press.

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FROM REVIEWS OF THE FIRST VOLUME

“This is an extremely provocative economic-cum-political history which must be considered in discus-sions of revolution, the transition to socialism, andSoviet society.”

— Theory & Society

“A fundamental Marxist reinterpretation of the earlyyears of the Soviet regime. Bettelheim’s lengthy andelaborate argument, supported by a vast knowledge ofthe period and its source material, maintains that theBolsheviks, despite the genius of Lenin, were not ableto carry through the class struggle and consolidate thedictatorship of the proletariat.”

— Foreign Affairs

“Using Marxist analytical categories and vocabulary,Bettelheim analyzes sympathetically, but not uncriti-cally, the problems that the Bolsheviks encountered inmoving Russia along its revolutionary path and thesolutions they tried to put into effect. He explains thereasons for the party’s movement in the direction of‘state bourgeoisie,’ the elimination of outside criticismof its own views, and the restrictions placed on free-dom of discussion within its own ranks. . . . The pre-sent work complements well, especially through itsexplicit comparisons of the Russian and Chinesecommunist experience . . . earlier able treatments ofthe topic. . . . Recommended.”

— Choice